


Our Art is Clandestine

by NexFerus



Series: Diviners by the Dead [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Bats, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Harry Potter is Lord Peverell, Harry Potter is the Heir to the House of Potter, Harry just wants to explore the world, He wants to experience life, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isolation, Minor Death Related Gore, Necromancer Harry Potter, Necromancy, Pre-Hogwarts, Smart Harry, Starvation, Young Harry, and see all the things the world holds, or one bat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 49,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28062768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NexFerus/pseuds/NexFerus
Summary: The beginning of Harry James Potter's life is marked with tragedy.His childhood is spent in solitude and pain with only the hope that he will one day explore the world and escape the walls of number 4, Privet Drive, to keep him alive.When Harry discovers magic and something else within him, he sets out to find the answers he seeks in an attempt to help keep himself alive until he can leave the Dursley household.This is his life from the beginning until the discovery of just what kind of gift his ancestors have handed down to him through blood.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley/Vernon Dursley
Series: Diviners by the Dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055660
Comments: 82
Kudos: 221





	1. Prologue

The sky outside was dark and the air was heavy.

On the horizon the land was illuminated by flashes of lightning that showed the coming storm.

As he stood there watching, the land told him of previous storms and the death that they had wrought. It whispered to him about the hunts for beasts long lost to time on these grounds and of forgotten bones under its soil. With each flash of lightning, he saw stories long since told being written.

The stories of people lost before this island was even formed.

He gazed at the coming storm long enough that it had almost reached him before he turned and walked back under the rock overhang he was currently calling his home.

There would be time for reminiscing later, when Death had come to take him home and his life had written his story into this land as well.

For now, it was time to hope.

Hope that the words and the story he was about to write would help someone, anyone.

Hope that he wouldn’t be forgotten, wouldn’t just become another story only remembered by the land he walked upon.

He picked up the leather he painstakingly crafted and cut his skin until his blood, red and a reminder his heart still beat, ran over his skin.

Then he started to write with it.

_To those reading this book, welcome. Be proud for you have lived longer than many of our forefathers, long enough to learn how to read, and long enough to find the ramblings of a half-mad and half-dead Necromancer._


	2. Chapter 2

_We are, and we have always been the unnerving cousin to both the magical and un-magical humans. While, we are not actually separate species from them, it often seems like we are. We may grasp the magics they can use as easily, if not easier, than we do the magics that only Necromancers can grasp. Perhaps because we were never meant to actually exist as others would speculate and use as an excuse for our extinction, perhaps it is because Death has no wish to release their grasp on what we call, or perhaps because we very rarely live long enough to even have the chance of grasping it. We die young. A by-product of our powers, a punishment, I think, for trying to dictate a realm far beyond our own._

_Those fragile first months of our life tend to be the most dangerous for us, we have yet to become capable of fending for ourselves and often times this is when our powers have the most influence on others. We are born cold but scream not unlike a banshee when we draw our first breath. Our parents may think we are sickly, for we have a sick pallor to our body and we give off an aura that unnerves those around us. In some cases, it is so unnerving that it drives those who spend the most time around us in those months to paranoid fantasies and leaves them unable to sleep no matter how tired. In some cases, there are those who think that we have been stolen and replaced with something else or infected with an otherworldly parasite, in any case they consider us a hazard to others._

*******

As the night was at its darkest and the seventh month died, a boy was born. He was born, in the nurse’s opinion, too small and too cold to still be alive, and, in everyone’s opinion, far too pale to be healthy.

There was a common fear in that room where he was brought into this world on that night, a fear that like the seventh month he was born in, that he too had died as something new began. Though that fear did not sit in the front of their minds for long, the boy, at this point still unnamed, sought to assure the world that he indeed lived and seemed to wish to challenge those who wanted to make it otherwise.

He wailed and screamed in a fashion not unlike a banshee, as his parents and honorary uncles would joke about in the coming months. It was high pitched and ear-piercing, but in his parent’s minds it was the best noise they had heard. Their son was alive and from the sounds of it would have no problems reminding the world of his livelihood.

This boy, born too small, too cold, and too pale, was named Harry James Potter.

The son of James Potter and Lily Potter nee Evans, new parents, proud Gryffindors, and warriors for the Order of the Phoenix. Godson to Sirius Black, who one would think shared all three of those aspects with James and Lily. More often than not, it was Sirius regaling those around him with tales of Harry’s first months in this world.

_[Sirius was proud to proclaim to his fellow Aurors that ‘Harry has the greenest eyes, exactly like his mother’s. And you should hear how loud he can scream, he is louder than someone using the Sonorus Charm, I swear it.’ He reached into his pocket and enlarged a collection of photos he carried with him, a reminder that he had a family even better than the one he was born into, flicking through them, ‘but, unfortunately and I do tell you it’s unfortunate, I can already tell you he’s got the cursed Potter hair.’_

_He held up a photo, one of his favourites that Lily had taken, in it a small baby boy, with pale skin, luminescent green eyes, and the proclaimed, unfortunate Potter hair upon his head, dressed in a red onesie with snitches flying around all over it, cooing and smiling at the person behind the camera._

_Sirius smiled, “just you wait, I’ve got him a broom for his first birthday and am willing to bet you that the Potter hair isn’t the only thing that Harry had gotten from his father. He’ll of also have gotten James’ talent on a broom.”]_

These first months of Harry’s young life were marked by his parents, like most new parent’s lives, with an overwhelming lack of sleep. It seemed for James and Lily that sleep was an entity that would rather elude them most nights, and this would only get worse as time went on. But sleeplessness did not dampen the love they felt for their son, for while they thought he was still too cold and too pale, he was a bright star in a world that was only getting darker.

Casualties were increasing, and fear had sunk into the world around them, as the war that was being waged beyond their walls increased in ferocity.

James and Lily went to bed at night and rose in the morning with fear in their hearts. The feared that each day would bring them the news of their friends’ deaths, of Voldemort and his forces gaining more control over the British Wizarding World, and fear of what the world Harry would grow up in would look like.

Still they smiled and laughed with Harry, read him stories from Beadle the Bard before he went to sleep, and pondered over the dislike the family cat, Leo, seemed to have for Harry.

_[‘I just don’t understand why Leo dislikes Harry so much, he was fine with Molly’s children.’_

_‘Molly’s children didn’t live in the house with him, and most definitely don’t have a scream that would put Banshees to shame. Leo just needs sometime to adjust, you’ll see in a few months Leo will stop being scared of him and hissing every time Harry is brought into a room.’_

_‘I guess you are right, but if it continues we will have to do something about it, James.’_

_‘Lily-Flower, you worry too much. Leo just needs to adjust, he’s just stressed and isn’t used to sharing our attention with anyone. Everything will work out.’]_

These happy moments would soon be tempered by worsening fear. Albus Dumbledore, their mentor and leader, came to them with the worst news a parent can get, their son was in danger and the only way to protect him was to hide.

And so, they did.

In their house in Godric’s Hollow, they hid under the Fidelius Charm with Sirius Black as their secret keeper.

In these months, peace was hard to find both within and outside the walls of Godric’s Hollow, tempers ran high as isolation and confinement saw the smallest of things get blown out of proportion. This portion of Harry’s childhood was marked with frustration, fear, and a family cat that no matter how much Harry wanted to pet it, hissed at him and repeatedly tried to claw him. Lily and James still smiled at him, laughed with him, read him stories, and played with him but every action was marked with a weariness that comes with living in high pressure situations.

Their lack of sleep increased as paranoia invaded every area of their life. Nightmare’s woke them screaming, images of their friends and Harry being captured, tortured, and killed by the forces that sought their destruction. They began to see potential threats in every person, even those closest to them.

_[‘I- it’s just- I would understand the temptation for Moony,’ James paced around his living room in front of Lily, he kept his steps quiet and his voice low as not to wake Harry in his room upstairs, ‘it’s just that, Moony has been spending a lot of time with the werewolf packs, and I know- I know he is one of my best mates, a Marauder, but Voldemort promises a lot for the werewolves. I would understand if he was tempted to join his side. I just want to trust him, but I can’t, not with Harry.’]_

This paranoia even affected Sirius who spent most of his free time at Godric’s Hollow playing with Harry. He began to feel as if his position as secret keeper for the Potter’s was at risk of being discovered.

_[“Just hear me out, Prongs. You know I would never, no matter how much they tortured me, give up where Harry, and you, and Lily are. But- but everyone else knows that too. They know that I would most definitely be your secret keeper, it is not exactly unknown that we are brothers and that I would be your first choice to hide your location. I would gladly continue to be your secret keeper, but that- that puts you at risk. What if they come after me and I can’t hold them off, and I die, and the secret gets revealed, because they know if they kill me they can find Harry.” Sirius ran his hand through his hair, he had been thinking about this for days._

_‘What if one day Voldemort’s goons got a jump on me and I couldn’t fight them off,’ Sirius thought, ‘Prongs, Lily, and Harry, would be in danger if I failed, are in danger if I fail to convince Prongs to switch secret keepers.’_

_“Prongs, James, you have to change it, everyone would continue to think it is me, but in reality it is Wormtail. Think about it, he was always the quiet one at school. No one would think it is him, if they even remember him. It is the perfect plan, an extra layer of security for you.”]_

And, as such, in the middle of October in 1981, the secret keeper of the Potter’s home in Godric’s Hollow switched from Sirius Black to Peter Pettigrew. An action borne of paranoia that would have dire consequences. 

It was Peter, Wormtail, the boy everyone thought of as quiet and unassuming and average, one of the Marauders, someone who spent seven years sharing a dorm with James at school, who held little Harry after he was born, that was in reality a spy for Voldemort and his forces in the Order of the Phoenix. It was he who betrayed the secret of the Potter’s location to the forces that sought their death.

*******

It was October 31st, 1981, Samhain, when Death visited the Potter’s.

The Potter’s knew that something would occur that day. They could not tell you how or why, but they felt as if they were looking upon an open tomb when they walked around their house. Their cat had run away earlier that week, an attempt to be as far away from Harry as he could, the one time they had their door open. Leo had yet to return except that morning to leave a dead raven on their doorstep. When they held Harry that day, they felt breathe upon the back of their necks and an undeniable urge to hold onto each other just to assure themselves that everyone was still there and breathing. So, yes, the Potter’s knew deep in their souls that Death was waiting outside their door for them to meet their fate soon.

A figure shrouded in black with red-eyes stared at the small abode that held a child that fate had decided would somehow have power to defeat him, someone who was beyond Death’s reach. ‘Poetic,’ Voldemort thought, ‘to rid the world of the only threat to my life and to be assured that I have defeated Death itself, when Death’s very realm lies closest to the living.’ He walked to the door unhurried, he knew that no one would disturb him before he completed his mission. It was James Potter who confronted him first as he entered the house, ‘a Pureblood and a fool,’ he thought as he raised his wand, ‘for refusing to join me, can he not see that I am destined to win? That opposing me just leads to his death.’

As James shouted for Lily to take their son and run, Voldemort raised his 13 and a half inch wand of yew, spared what would be the last Lord Potter no further thought, and uttered the last words James Potter would ever hear, “avada kedavra.”

He walked past the now rapidly cooling corpse and followed the path Lily Potter took up the stairs. He found her standing in front of the crib in which sat his prophesied vanquisher, he could not see the boy, but it did not matter, he knew the boy would die this night.

The women’s, James Potter’s wife, Lily Potter, a _Mudblood_ , voice was shrill and pleading. Begging him to spare her son. How many had tried to plead with him for their life or their families? He did not know and did not care, he could not fathom why they tried, he was not merciful to those who opposed him. It was not her pleading that stilled his wand and words, but the fact that one of his most promising followers plead for her life earlier that did. Severus Snape, a promising follower, both a prodigy with potions the like of which had not been seen in centuries and a formidable soldier with the ability to create useful spells for his side, had pled for her life and he would try to fulfil Snape’s pleas.

He demanded the witch to step aside, after all she was not the one prophesied to defeat him, her death meant nothing. Still she begged, ‘mercy’ she pleaded, how foolish did she think he was. If he was merciful he would have never succeeded, the merciful never made it far and never achieved their goals. What a fool was Lily Potter, a fool for not taking his rare choice of letting his opponents survive, a fool for refusing to step aside, a fool for not fearing her death by his hands.

He told her again, and still she refused to step aside. Begging instead for him to kill her instead of her son, as if he could not do both, as if he could not just kill her and then turn his wand of the infant and end his life too. Still, it would be amusing to see the limits she would go to, to see if she would truly think that if he accepted her bargain he would only kill her. He said as much, that the bargain had been accepted and for her to drop her wand, but finally, the witch seemed to come to her senses, far, far too late.

Unlike, Lily Potter’s amateur attempt, he was faster with the words, a master of this spell, a prodigy at delivering death to those on the other side of his wand.

“Avada kedavra,” he spoke and like her husband before her, she fell to the ground, unmoving and eyes unseeing, dead.

Finally, he gazed upon the one said to vanquish him. Small, pale, hair like midnight, and eyes the color of the curse he just uttered. Silent and unnerving was the boy in the crib. Unnerving perhaps because this boy could one day bring about his death, perhaps because the boy had met his eyes with an intensity he usually only saw in the eyes of those who laid on the ground before him dying.

“You should be proud that you will die at the end of my wand. None as young as you have ever gotten that pleasure. Your death will secure my power in this world and end any threat to my immortality. For that fact alone, I will make your death painless,” with that final statement Voldemort raised his wand, eyes locked with the child, and uttered the same words that had fell his parents just minutes before, “avada kedavra.”

Green and a colour beyond what a human should be able to perceive surrounded him, a roar filled his ears like a Dragon of Old rising from its slumber, a blast of heat, and pain, endless, all-consuming pain. And then he stood as something less than a spirit but more than dead, a wraith, in the very room that for the first time his avada kedavra had failed him. The boy, _his vanquisher_ , still watched him with that unnerving gaze, now filled with tears and with a lightning bolt upon his forehead, from his crib. With this Voldemort fled, bodiless and unnerved from the room.

*******

Sirius Black knew something was wrong, the place in the back of his mind where the instincts left over from when he was Padfoot told him so.

“Death had come to the Potters,” it told him, “they are dead and gone. You have failed.”

Never before had Sirius hated his Animagus form more than he did now, what use was a form so alike to a grim, if it only told him of his friends’ impending deaths far, far, too late for him to prevent it.

He was already atop his motorcycle and knew it would take longer to land and apparate to the Potter’s cottage than to continue on atop it. When he arrived, he felt as if he had walked into a graveyard, one of the ones marked by tragic tales and gravestones with dates far too close together. He knew they were dead, the same way he knew that it was his fault. It was in the front hall where he found James, his brother by something greater than blood. His body laid there, he could have been mistaken for being asleep if not for the lack of movement in his chest.

‘I did this,’ Sirius thought. ‘I told him to switch to Peter, it was me who herald their deaths.’

He continued to the nursery, like James, Lily laid on the floor like a porcelain doll discarded after children had no more use for it. It was also there that he found Hagrid, tears in his eyes and Harry’s even smaller looking body in his arms.

“Hagrid? Why are you here? Who sent you?” He asked, while Hagrid had a good heart, he lacked a wand to fight with.

“Professor Dumbledore sen’ me here ter see if anyone managed ter survive. Bu’ when I arrive’ Lily an’ James were- they were dead, an’ poor little Harry- oh poor little Harry, all alone here withou’ his parents.” Hagrid was close to actually crying now, and Sirius was at a loss.

“You mean- Harry’s not- is he- he’s not dead?”

“Oh, yes, little Harry manage’ ter survive, yes he did. With only a scratch on his head.”

His godson survived the unimaginable, he still lived and breathed, but death clung to him like a cloak. Harry was in good hands, Hagrid wouldn’t hurt him, would bring Harry to Professor Dumbledore and away from Sirius, away from the reason he was now an orphan. In turn, Sirius felt as if he had to get away from Harry, had to get away from that unnerving feeling of being where his dearest friends died, get away from the feeling of death that surrounded his godson because of him, get away from the reminder of his failures, get away and make that _rat_ pay for what he did.

“You will bring him to Dumbledore, right? Take my motorcycle, its outside, you’ll get there faster.” Sirius said, thoughts of where that rat would be whirling through his mind. He would retrieve his godson from Dumbledore later, after he had hunted down the betrayer of the Potter’s secret. With Hagrid’s affirmation, he spared one last glance to the boy in Hagrid’s arms, still too pale, too small, and with hair too alike James’ for him not to feel pain looking at it, and left.

***

It was in the early morning hours of the day after October 31st that saw Harry with his new scar, shaped like lightning upon his forehead, being delivered to his new home, one number four, Privet Drive. He was placed there, on the doorstep with only a note in the frigid air, by a giant of a man, a cat turned woman, and an old man with a long white beard. If perhaps they looked closer they would see that the feeling of death that hung in the air around little Harry was not a by-product of the killing curse, nor a by-product of his parent’s death, but was Harry himself.


	3. Chapter 3

_This aura, lack of sleep, and paranoid fantasies destroys any bond between child and parent before it can even be forged. It increases the likelihood of those we are supposed to rely upon killing us or leaving us in the wild places of the world. I cannot fault them for that, I think that perhaps once upon a time we were truly a cousin race to the humans of today and mixed with them enough that it is hard to distinguish us from them. A race where this aura helped the parents stay awake to watch the most vulnerable when we were prey to all forces of creatures long extinct from the world. For it warns off most predators in today’s world, cats hiss at us, dogs howl as we walk past, birds take flight, and humans, well, they tend to try and avoid us._

*******

It was the cold morning of November 1st, when freakishness invaded her perfectly normal life once again.

Petunia Dursley of number 4, Privet Drive, was very proud to say that she was completely normal with her cookie cutter house and perfect lawn, very proud of her perfectly normal family with Vernon and her little Dudley. A life without the freakishness that surrounded her sister, Lily. So, to say she was displeased when she opened the door the morning the 1st of November to retrieve the milk and instead found the freakish offspring of her sister sitting upon her porch, is an understatement.

When she had first seen him, she thought he was dead, after all he was rather pale, paler than her sister ever was. Also, when she picked him up, basket and all, he felt as cold as she imagined a corpse would be. ‘Not surprising and rather unfortunate,’ she thought, ‘that the babe would freeze in the night.’ Though any sympathy she held for the boy in the basket would evaporate upon reading the letter left with him.

The boy’s name was Harry James Potter, the spawn of her abnormal sister and that fiendish boy she had married.

She would have gotten rid of the boy the moment she found him, dropped him off at an orphanage, or left him on the steps of a church with hopes they could exorcise the freakishness from him, or, thinking back to that time that horrid boy tried to drop a tree branch on her head, put him back out into the cold in the woods just beyond the neighborhood in the hopes that he would die swiftly and out of sight.

She would have if that letter had not threatened her with their freakish powers and people, talking about blood wards around her perfectly normal home. She knew enough about their magic from listening to Lily’s rants when she returned home in the summer that nothing good could ever come from anything to do with blood. Now, she had to deal with this- this parasite in her home or risk her family to whatever fiendish things the _wizards_ had done.

To make it worse, the child didn’t even look normal! He had a pallor usually associated with the sick, and if his hair was anything like his father’s it would never be able to cut into or tamed into a respectable haircut like the other boys in Privet Drive. And his eyes, _his eyes_ , so alike her sister’s eyes, but just beyond normal. They were too bright, too green, in her opinion, and his gaze felt like judgement on her back, like he could see into the depths of her soul, as if he had any right to judge someone as normal as her.

Yes, the boy was the definition of abnormal.

She had to keep him away from Dudley, or the boy could infect her son with his freakishness. Just like that nasty boy back in Cokeworth had infected Lily in her youth with talks of magic and witches and everything conceivably not normal. She refused to let that happen to her Dudders. If the boy was to stay, he would stay where all the other unwanted things stayed, in the cupboard under the stairs.

She would put a small second-hand cot in there for him and he could wear whatever Dudley grew out of for clothing. She wouldn’t spend a single dollar on the boy. She refused to make her son suffer just because she had to care for her sister’s son, who didn’t even have the decency to die alongside his parents.

*******

The smallest member of the Dursley family’s name was Freak.

Or well, it was the closest thing he had to a name. He knew it wasn’t a name, objectively, but the only other option he had was Boy and he _knew_ that was even less of a name than Freak.

His family had only ever referred to him as Freak and Boy, when Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon called him it was only ever by those titles. Though sometimes they only said ‘ _You_ ’ in a tone full of hatred and acid, like it was something that pained them to even speak.

That was when he knew he had done something wrong.

Knew that pain was to come, that he better not hope that the pain in his stomach would be sedated by some scrape of food later, that he would be bleeding by the end of the day.

But this only happened when he was allowed outside his cupboard. And that wasn’t often. The early years of his life were spent, more often than not, in the dark and isolated cupboard under the stairs. They preferred not to think about him, nor look at him, nor acknowledge that he existed at all.

So, he learned to be quiet very early on or to suffer through worse pain than usual.

He learned how to ignore the prevailing, breathless, hunger that sat in his stomach and the all-consuming terror that they had forgotten all about him in this little space filled with other forgotten items.

Learned how to act like he didn’t exist.

He didn’t know how old he was when they stated to let him out of his cupboard for longer than an hour. He was too young, and they hadn’t told him his birthday because what use did a _freak_ have for one, for him to be able to know. He traded his silence in the cupboard for his silence while doing an endless list of chores and a higher risk that his skin would be bruised by day’s end.

But this was the only world he had known. His Aunt Petunia refused to let him leave the house resorting to locking him in his cupboard when she left the house with Dudley. Afraid that he would somehow contaminate the rest of the neighbourhood or taint her reputation of normalcy. 

He had only ever been outside the walls of number 4 when forced to do the small amount of chores he had in the backyard. Chores that left his nails cracked, and fingers sore, and skin burnt and peeling as he worked for hours under the burning sun, in clothing far too large on him, without water to drink. But in his opinion these were the best chores he had.

It was worth the extra pain of taking too long or being too slow while doing his outside chores, in order to spend just a _little_ more time free from the suffocating walls inside.

Free to watch the flowers that tended to bloom brighter and bigger under his hands. Free to watch the butterflies go from flower to flower, free to watch the birds flying far above him in the sky.

When regulated to choirs inside he made sure to take a little extra time cleaning the windows or be a little slower dusting in front of them, just so he could watch the world outside.

Imagining, hoping, wishing, that maybe one day he could escape from number 4, Privet Drive and go explore the world. To find others that wouldn’t mind if he played with their toys or even just let him talk to them. He hoped so much, that it felt like it would strangle his heart and drown him underneath it.

While, he wasn’t allowed outside or to experience the wider world during this time. It didn’t stop him from learning about it.

He learned during the nights when the pain in his body and the hunger in his stomach was so bad that he could barely even think, much less believe he could ever sleep, far after the time Dudley had gone to sleep. On these nights, if he sat quietly enough, pressed up against that locked door that kept him separate from the rest of the world, he could hear the television.

Could hear enough to learn about plants and animals and stars and far off places during the rare times something education was playing on it. He learned about the news and the laws and what people were considered respectable, even if he didn’t know what most of it meant at the time.

This was his lifeline during those nights, the nights when he believed that nonexistence would be better than this. That he should had died with his drunk, good-for-nothing parents. It was this small connection to a world far away from him that reminded him that there were things still worth living for.

Spiders far larger than the ones that lived in the cupboard with him. Cold air that was caused by snowcapped mountains. Darkness streaked with ribbons of light in blues and purples and greens.

He knew that there were people out there, people beyond the Dursleys, he could see them walk past the house during the odd times he could look out the windows, and he saw and heard them on the television, but to him other people and the outside world always seemed to be as distant from him as the stars in the sky.

And he wanted, more than anything, to be a part of that world, to close that distance, to experience something beyond this.

*******

The first time, Freak was allowed outside, he was terrified. He had waited for so long for this moment and it was finally upon him. The world was outside this door and he was finally allowed to become a part of it.

The sun felt more pronounced than it ever had before, the grass was the same, but he thought it felt different, the trees larger, the flowers brighter.

But the people, well, he thought that the people wouldn’t stare at him as much as they seem to be. The bruises that usually marred his skin without discrimination had been carefully hidden underneath his clothing for the past few weeks, so he knew that wasn’t why the gazed at him with judgement in their eyes.

Yes, he knows, he is too pale with hair too wild and eyes too green, his aunt reminded him often enough.

Or maybe it wasn’t that and they could just tell that he was a freak, like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon did.

He lowered his gaze to the ground, hunched his shoulders, slowed his pace. Maybe they would stop looking at him if he made himself less noticeable.

“Boy! Keep up, or Dudders will never make it to the park in time to meet his friends,” his Aunt shrieked.

His eyes shot upwards, looking at his aunt’s retreating back, “coming, Aunt Petunia!” he called, picking up his pace but trying not to miss anything.

There was so much to see, so much _life_. This was what he had always wanted to experience.

He hoped everyone would stop staring, stop craning their necks over the fence and peeking out their windows to get a look at him.

He knew he didn’t fit in with the others in the neighbourhood. But it didn’t mean that he would hurt anyone, if that was what they were thinking, he just wanted to see if he can make a friend today.

When they finally reached the park, his aunt ordered him to stand beside her. So, he wouldn’t be ruining Dudley’s fun with his presence.

It was at this time that he began to think that his hopes for a friend wouldn’t be met today. It was also the time that the other neighbourhood mothers wandered over. A second child in the Dursley's home that hadn’t been seen before? This was the gossip of the month.

“I didn’t know you had a second son, Petunia? Or are you just babysitting him? This is the first time I have ever saw him with you,” stated one of the women. She eyed him with badly concealed distain and interest. Whether it was due to his baggy clothing or just his appearance overall, he couldn’t tell. But he wished she wouldn’t, he didn’t want to cause any trouble, it wasn’t his fault he looked like this, wasn’t his fault that freaky things sometimes happened.

“Oh, no he isn’t mine. He was my good-for-nothing sister’s son. A rather troubled and sickly boy, that’s why you haven’t seen him before now. We had to keep him inside to keep him healthy and prevent him from causing any mischief,” Aunt Petunia stated, as if he hadn’t ever been sick, and as if, it wasn’t her son that was the troublemaker.

The surrounding moms nodded and suddenly, Aunt Petunia was a kind-hearted and loving aunt and himself, well, he was a budding delinquent whose life would be marked with periods of sickness in which no one would be surprised if they don’t see him.

It was this conversation that planted the seed of his future reputation.

The few times he was brought back to the park and actually allowed to play, the children avoided him.

They walked away, ignored him, and sometimes even chased him off.

Whether it was because they were warned away by their parents or because of everything that made him, him, he didn’t know, but it didn’t seem like his isolation from anyone not the Dursleys would be broken anytime soon.

So, he spent these trips hidden in the shadows of the scattered trees, knees pulled up to his chest and with burning eyes as he tried not to cry, watching the other children laugh and play and make friends.

And it wasn’t just the people that had no wish to be around him, but the animals too.

When the cats let others pet them they turned around to claw and hiss at him.

The neighbourhood dogs, so friendly to everyone else and eager to play, howled and barked when we walked near.

And the only birds that didn’t take flight when he wandered over to them were the crows and ravens.

He took this as a symbol of his misfortune. A sign from the world that he was not a wanted nor an accepted presence in the perfectly normal Privet Drive.

He was allowed outside, but to him it felt like he was still in his cupboard listening to the television describe the world around him and being unable to participate in it.

A ghost amongst the living.


	4. Chapter 4

_If we make it past our infancy, which most of us do not, we can consign ourselves to solitude and isolation. We lack the bond that others usually hold with their parent and often times the events drive them to be distant from us. Though, our aura fades mostly at this time, the primal part of a person’s brain will still recognize that there is something not quite right with us. I have heard some describe it as feeling as if someone has just walked over their grave or as if there is something right behind them breathing down their necks. People will seek to avoid these feelings and, as such, avoid us. Paranoia and fear festers in the brains of those who only see us from a distance, they know that there is something different about us, but they do not know what. For those that cannot avoid us nor get through the fear that clouds their brains, expect hostility. After all, any animal that cannot escape and feels scared will turn around to bite you as a last resort._

*******

Once everyone in the neighbourhood knew he existed, his list of chores increased dramatically, not only was he to clean the entire inside of the house and back garden but also tend to the front yard and Aunt Petunia’s prized flowers.

But still it seemed that no matter how long he was forced to stay outside in the blazing heat to tend to the yard, no matter how red his skin became, his skin refused to tan. It stayed and would continue to remain the sickly pallor of a corpse.

This infuriated his aunt even more as he aged, and he learned to dodge whatever happened to be in her hands at the time quickly and to only anger her when there was nothing in her hands. After all, he did know that his aunt hated touching him. While, she was careful not to leave bruises too often, the times she did it was easy to explain away his absence as a flair up of his ‘illness.’

His aunt and uncle had learned how to hit harder and cause him more pain as he grew older. He learned how to work through the pain, how to ignore the hunger, how to weed the garden with a broken wrist that still flared with pain whenever he moved it wrong or when a storm darkened the sky.

To others in the neighbourhood, they were told he bruised easily due to his sickness.

The only sickness he had was his family.

Just because he spent more time bruised than not, didn’t mean that they weren’t cruel in other ways, when he was younger he could swear his aunt tried to drown him a few times, and food was always scarce to come by.

So, scarce that sometimes he actually thought he would starve to death. Scarce enough that sometimes his hunger got so bad that he actually contemplated if the pain of digging his teeth into his arm and biting would be better than the pain in his stomach.

That if he sunk his teeth into the next person to walk past him and tore, that it would be worth the beating he would get.

This left him mostly just skin and bones, almost a walking skeleton, lending credence to the story that he was sickly.

But getting locked in his cupboard for days on end seemed like the favourite punishment of theirs.

The cupboard wasn’t so bad anymore, his eyes had long since grown accustomed to the darkness which meant that too much time in the sunlight left him with terrible headaches that made him want to bash his head in.

But he found that he preferred its isolation and silence to the cacophony of noise and the endless mass of students that surrounded him when he had to go to school.

School was the _only_ reason he learned that his name was not Freak and instead that it was Harry Potter.

When Aunt Petunia had to tell him it, she did so reluctantly. Acting as if he didn’t deserve one, as if she was merciful master, a kind-hearted deity, giving him a gift by bestowing it onto him. As if it hadn’t already belonged to him in the first place. As if it wasn’t something she shouldn’t have to give him after spending years in his presence.

Harry Potter was _his_ name. It belonged to _him_. She had no right to have taken it.

It was one of the only things he had left from his parents and he refused to let someone else take it from him ever again.

So, while school did give him his name, it also ended up as another reminder of his isolation.

If his classmates didn’t avoid him because he was, well, himself, they avoided him because of Dudley. His cousin had no problems in gathering a group of people to surround himself with and was not afraid to use these larger numbers to stage an attack on him.

‘Harry Hunting’ was fast coming his least liked phrase.

But the school, also held his favourite place, the library.

Quiet and isolated, to him it was a larger version of his cupboard, except there were an endless number of different worlds that he could get lost in and always something new he could learn. Plus, Dudley would never willingly enter the library, so he was safe from him when within its walls.

The librarian also seemed to like him, a first in his short life, in a quiet and not verbalized manner, she always let him stay in at recess and read the books. Putting aside books for him that she thought he might like.

He thought that she might understand what it meant to be lonely and to find refuge in a book from the overbearing world outside of it. To think that if you sat still long enough you might be able to ignore the bruises on your skin and the pain that throbs in time with your heart. To read a book and ignore that the only things reminding you that you still breath and live and exist is the pain from the bruises and hunger eating at your stomach.

The library was his refuge, and it had taught him a lot of things.

While, he learned from the Dursleys how to breathe with broken ribs, how to garden with crooked fingers, how not to burn the bacon when cooking, how to watch people, and how to silent. The library taught him how to wrap bandages, how to disinfect cuts, how to exist beyond where he was now, how to laugh at the stories the books held, and how to receive a small measure of kindness from others.

But mostly life and the library taught him how to pick his battles.

So, when his aunt was displeased with him for “humiliating her Dudders” by getting better grades than his cousin, he resigned himself to worsening grades and to patience. To not handing in homework and to getting wrong answers on tests. He knew his grades were not a decisive battle he needed to win or face death for.

He had battles yet to pick, and battles yet to win.

One of these battles was the length of his hair. His aunt seemed to absolutely _loathe_ his hair, an apparent replica of his father, a fact he had to take Aunt Petunia’s word for since he had never seen a photo of him nor even knew his name, but it did mean that he just loved his hair all the more.

And he refused to let her take it from him like she did his name.

So, when Aunt Petunia would spend months making snide comments about his hair as it grew longer, building herself up to having to touch him and cut it, he waited and braced himself.

He knew from watching her that she hated touching him more than she hated his hair.

This meant that after the rare times his aunt shaved his hair to almost bald, leaving him bleeding from cuts from the razor or scissors or whatever she used to cut it as she yanked at his hair, as if trying to pull it out from the root when cutting it, he would reach down deep within himself to the part that made him do ‘freaky’ things, wishing desperately for his hair to regrow, and by morning it would be its previous length once again.

Of course, this often found him being sentenced to days after days of isolation in his cupboard usually with blood still drying in his newly regrown hair and on his body by some rougher than usual treatment from his uncle and the words, ‘and you will stay in there until you have learned your lesson,’ ringing though his head.

As if he had a lesson to learn besides how to check himself for a concussion.

But to him this small act of deviance was worth it.

Worth the pain, worth the blood, worth the ache.

Worth it all to keep his father’s hair.

He knew she wouldn’t spend any money to bring him to a hair salon to get it cut and he knew that she would avoid touching him even more now to even risk trying to cut his hair. So, yes, he knew how to pick his battles and win them when he did.

These days of solitude were worth it.

Especially, since these days often lined up with his Aunt Marge’s visits. Her dog, Ripper, like most animals, did not like him at all and the feeling was mutual. But unlike Mrs.Figg’s cats who all hissed at him and ran away, Ripper would rather make him run away.

The first few time Ripper had chased him up a tree and tried to bite him, the Dursleys enjoyed his suffering and laughed at him. Sometimes his cousin would even hold him down to let Ripper bite him hard enough to draw blood.

A game, in Dudley’s opinion, to see how high his cousin could scream as the dog tore at his legs and arms.

Dogs were his _least_ favourite animal.

After all, they were the only animal that has left scars running up and down his body, reminders of the times he hadn’t run fast enough to avoid Dudley or the sharp teeth of the canine.

This enjoyment in his suffering changed after the one time he had been cornered by Ripper and had no place to escape to in order to avoid being bitten by him. Somehow, in the few seconds he had his eyes closed preparing for pain, holding his breath and waiting, thinking ‘make it fast, make it quick, hopefully it won’t be too deep this time and there won’t be so much blood,’ he had terrified the dog so bad Ripper had refused to get out from underneath the couch, yet he couldn’t tell you how he did it.

_That_ had resulted in him having a week of isolation to his cupboard, most of which he spent unconscious from his punishment by Uncle Vernon.

After this visit, Aunt Marge refused to let him be in the room with Ripper and his uncle made him spend most of her visits in his cupboard with no food instead.

So, yes, he rather liked his cupboard. He liked it even more since he wouldn’t have to hear the cruel comments they would make towards him or his parents when they knew he was in earshot of them.

Yes, his parents may have been drunks, and horrible people, and everything else they said, but they were _his_. They were his parents and it still hurt for them to say it.

It also meant that he would have a chance to read the books he had gotten from the school library.

He hid them underneath his baggy shirts and then underneath his cot in his cupboard, so he wouldn’t get punished for having them and they wouldn’t be taken away from him. In particular, the books that dealt with topics that were _taboo_ in the Dursley house.

While he liked reading books about exploration around the world, about climbing mountains, and sailing the seas, and landing on the moon, about different cultures and plants and animals. He loved novels that dealt with things that were not mentioned by _any_ inhabitants in the Dursley home, including Dudley, who never got told no.

This was his silent form of rebellion, an act of defiance.

These were his favourite subjects, because if the they didn’t like them than it meant that it would definitely be things he would like as they would be like him, something abnormal.

That meant while his cousin was watching some colourful show full of explosions on the television or in the dead of night when everyone was asleep, he read about magic and myths. He read books full of epic adventures with hobbits, dwarves, elves, magic rings, and a wizard.

They were rather large and hard for him to read at first, but he quickly devoured them. After all this was a world that he thought he would fit into and some of the things Harry did seemed rather like magic to him. But mostly because these were the first books he had found that his aunt had specifically ranted about, she had called the all manner of things the day she had come home from meeting with the other neighbourhood wives and one of them mentioned the new books she had started to read that included _magic_.

This series spawned his love for more. So, once he finished it, he scoured the school library for any book he could find about magic and wizards, and once he finished there, he went searching about legends and myths in his world, from there he learned all about rituals from around the world, of lost cities of gold, of secret societies, of ways to gain immortality, and mythical creatures.

Which in turn led him to reading ghost stories and horror novels, about the dead coming back to life, about vengeful spirits, about all manners of terrifying things. Though, the librarian always looked disproving when he checked them out she never stopped him, probably because he had read almost everything else.

These were the stories he liked the most. Perhaps because the ghost stories reassured him that there was something after death and that he would one day see his parents again. Perhaps because they told him that being alone wasn’t the worst thing that could occur in the world. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps he loved all these books because they told him that his own powers were not that abnormal after all.

While, the books didn’t talk about turning a teacher’s hair blue. They did talk about being one place and reappearing in another, like the time he ended up on the school roof after running from Dudley’s gang in a round of Harry Hunting. It was from these novels that he got the inspiration of trying to purposely make something ‘freakish’ happen.

‘A ball of light. That seems rather simple,’ he decided, ‘to allow me to read even at night after the they go to sleep.’ As an afterthought he noted, ‘like a wisp, the ones that travelers on a journey see.’

It wasn’t as simple as it seemed. He knew that the power to allow him to such was within him and not from something in the world around him, he just didn’t know how to access it.

Yes, he knew he could turn another’s hair blue, and yes, he knew he could disappear and reappear elsewhere, but he didn’t know how he managed to do such things.

This led to sleepless nights as he sought to understand what was within him and how to make it do what he wanted, eventually after re-reading a book that mentioned dream walking he realized his problem. He needed to find it within him first then figure out how to access it.

It still wasn’t easy, he tried just searching for it and then he tried meditating. This saw his first few attempts to meditate ending in failure as he found himself falling asleep exhausted from non-stop work, but eventually he managed it.

This was where problems began. He had two very different portions of power within him. Both gave him a sense of home, of family, of being as much a part of him as the blood in his veins. That was where the similarities stopped.

The first felt like what he imagined a star would. With barely contained energy, that restless and jumpy feeling that crawled underneath his skin when he knew he was about to get away with something.

The second felt like the eerie stillness of a winter day when the snow laid untouched, of a pool of too still water as the only boundary between here and an endless primordial jungle just on the other side.

He knew they would be hard to control. If they were anything like what they represented to him they would not like being bound to his will. This didn’t stop him though, he had known hard work his entire life, and he’d always known that if he ever wanted something he would always be forced to fight for it.

The first thing he wanted was a ball of light. He turned his attention away from the second pool of power and back to the star-like energy. Reaching a mental hand into it he _pulled_. The first few times he did this, the results were not what he wanted, things floated, blew up, and changed color, but it did not form light.

Eventually, he realized he had to focus on making a ball of light when he pulled on the star or else it wouldn’t work. Then he realized he had to continue to focus on making light once he had it, in order for it not to burn out.

It was a night like any other when he succeeded. A small ball of blue light flickered in an invisible wind above his hand. Barely there and barely giving off any light, but still _there_.

‘Light. A ball of light above my hand. I did this. I made this happen,’ Harry thought. ‘Proof that what I am is more than what they are. Proof that one day I can escape this house and leave, explore all the places I’ve learned about.’

With his new found ability to make a ball of light, Harry also found out the limits to his power. While, he could create small licks of flames in his hand, red and blue and hot enough to warm him on the nights he felt like he would freeze. He could not make something solid out of nothing, nor could he do a lot of the things he had read other wizards being able to do in his books. Which was slightly disappointing.

‘But they always had staffs to do their magic, so maybe, I just need one of those,’ he pondered, he wasn’t willing to give up quite yet.

His ball of light complete and experimentation on hold for now, it was time for him to experiment with the other power inside him.

He reached inside him for that eerie stillness and prepared to break it. Unlike the first, he paused before he completed his goal. Something was warning him that if he continued nothing would ever be the same, and once it was broken it would never be able to be fixed.

This only deterred him for a few moments, he knew what it was like to have to be on the outside in his own home, a living ghost haunting its halls, he refused to be forced to avoid something in his own body

He reached his hand towards the water and eerie stillness and broke the surface. Then where there once was a calm lake, a silent winter day, was a raging ocean, old and endless and secure in its indestructibility. The chill and blizzards that made the last ice age came to life, a deafening howl and winds strong enough to topple mountains.

And Harry, Harry suddenly knew that he had woken something within him that was unfathomable and ancient.

He had broken the barrier between this realm and the next.


	5. Chapter 5

_For those with magic this fear is lessened as is the avoidance as we grow older, but for those of us not lucky enough to be born in the magical world it is of little consolidation. The isolation we endure may turn our very powers against us, as we draw ourselves inwards away from all-consuming silences and from the pain of being forgotten in the shadows, we become living ghosts, shadows of our former selves, empty shells that tend to break leaving our powers to, in lack of better words, leak from us like blood from an open wound. Eventually, so much will leak from us that we start to decay while still breathing, it is slow, and it is painful and often we do not realize it until Death embraces us._

*******

Harry was treading where no mortal belonged, where no being of flesh and blood should exist.

He felt as if he was being shred apart, muscles ripped and torn, ragged from running for too long from something he couldn’t see, his bones shattered and reformed, grew and broke, an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

His lungs felt full of water, or blood, or some other liquid, designed to drown him in its depths and see him dead.

He couldn’t hear his thoughts, his heartbeat, his screams, over the indistinct screeching and howling of voices penetrating his mind.

“You don’t belong here,” something whispered into heart and soul. Louder and softer than the voices, indistinct, singular and multiple, finite and infinite.

He didn’t know where here was.

He wanted to laugh and cry. Scream and be silent. He wanted to crawl out of his skin and burrow into it so far that he could never leave.

Fear had consumed every part of him.

It was this indescribable terror, the instincts left over from before humans had tamed fire, that drew him back from the yawning void and endless oceans.

He shoved, and shoved, and _shoved,_ this power down, and down, and _down,_ farther still. Trying to bury it and ignore it and make it _leave_.

Harry came back to his body trembling, chilled to his ever soul, he hugged himself as tears welled in his eyes.

There were monsters of old in his soul, and he felt terrified in his own skin.

*******

Since that day, months had passed, and Harry Potter’s life had not been the same.

The library and his cupboard were still his refuge, he still disliked crowds and getting stared at, and people still avoided him like he had the plague, which he didn’t, just so you know.

His aunt still hated him, his uncle still shouted, and his cousin still loved to play ‘Harry Hunting,’ but he wasn’t alone anymore, in a way at least.

He had woken something in him that day last year and it had yet to go back to sleep. It terrified him as it prowled around his body, salivating and rabid, hungry and demanding and wanting to be used.

And it had to be used.

In the beginning, he had tried to ignore it, ignore the restless feeling underneath his skin, ignore the whispers that turned to shouts that originated from nowhere. Ignore everything that it was and everything that had happened.

This was a mistake.

He had been gardening one day, hands cracked and bleeding, throat dry, a merciless headache pounding behind his eyes from the sun, when he came across the body of a bird that looked like it had a run in with one of Mrs. Figg’s cats. He was debating on what to do with it, when what he had awoken seemed to lurch out of him, a predator pouncing on its prey.

Then the bird moved.

Chest heaving, feet twitching, wing fluttering and flapping ignoring that it was dislodging the few strands of flesh that kept the lower half of the wing connected.

It stood and took a few wavering steps. Seemingly ignorant to the fact that its intestines were hanging from its body and that one of its wings were missing, that he could see its bones.

He screamed, and it fell back to the ground, dead once again.

He was punished for screaming of course, bloodied and bruised, he was thrown into his cupboard and given no food for days. But at least they hadn’t seen the obviously dead bird walking, if they had, he think they would have actually had tried to kill him.

He wondered if they could.

That was when he knew that the two powers were nothing alike in their execution. The first he could only call magic, after all it felt like how people described it in his books and he could partially do what he read in his novels with it. The second was something he had a hard time defining, seemingly defying all explanation, and finally settled on calling it the Doorway.

The Doorway was called that because with the exception of the Bird Incident, it seemed to him that it was a doorway to another place full of people, a place beyond here and beyond now.

Brave and terrified, he refused to let this be the thing that broke him, that beat him, that made live in fear in his own body.

When he finally gained just enough courage to try and touch the power again, he realized through trial and error, through panic and terror, that if he didn’t fully immerse himself in it the Doorway wasn’t too overwhelming, too terrifying, he could work with it, as long as he didn’t lose himself.

When he reached inside him, he found that if he stood at the edge of the blizzard or floated in the water he heard whispers. If he actively pulled power, lengthening the borders of this domain, he could even hear the whispers when going about his normal day. Eerie at first, the screaming and begging and soft croons, but useful, if you could decipher the overwhelming swell of information and contradicting sources.

But it was also very, very easy to get lost in.

Nowadays as much as he liked his cupboard under the stairs, he also dreaded it.

Sure, the isolation and darkness soothed him in ways he had not felt since the brief time in his youth when he could only assume his parents were still alive.

But that same isolation, and darkness, and silence made it so much easier to find himself lost in the strange powers that nestled inside his chest, and heart, and mind. The cupboard had nothing to distract him from the powers and during these times it tended to rise up and surround him.

It was during these times of when darkness, and silence, and loneliness, surrounded him too tightly, that this endless sea rose up with in him, he felt hands, ice cold and more than he could count, grasping at him.

So alike and unlike the times Aunt Petunia was forced to give him a bath when he was younger.

When her hands, stiff and unyielding, held him under the cold water of the bath in an attempt to get him clean in the shortest amount of time possible, so she could once more be able to avoid touching him. The same disregard to the fact he couldn’t breathe. But, these hands were longer and sharper and far stronger than hers ever were.

It was as if they were trying to drag him to the depths of the water or to the middle of the blizzard, so he would never be able to leave.

A punishment for being where he shouldn’t be.

When the Doorway overwhelmed him, his magic tended to respond. Creating lights to lead him back from the darkness, lighting fires in his hands to give him warmth when it felt like he was about to freeze.

When he came back to himself he felt as if his muscles had been torn from his bones, that he had been skinned and left to bleed. Pain, worse than Uncle Vernon’s punishments ever were.

It was the other power, both too hot and too cold, that felt like the endless darkness above his head at night and the unfathomable depths of the oceans, that scared him the most.

Yes, the second power, it felt far less like he could control it but rather that it could control him, and that _terrified_ him.

The whispers weren’t that bad though, once he had gotten used to them, it was worth the fear in order to finally have something to talk to that could respond back.

They tended to be the most useful and fascinating when he was searching for answers about his magic, or when something got their interest, even if he didn’t understand everything they said. This always raised his curiosity and drew his attention.

Like when he had his nightmares of a green light, the constant chanted of ‘avada kedavra’ would haunt his steps the following day, a merciless echo to events he couldn’t remember.

Or when he was cleaning the mirror and he caught a glimpse of his scar in the mirror, red and fresh like always, that left him with a headache. A continuous mass of voices whispering.

_The boy-who-lived. Survivor of the killing curse. Vanquisher of you-know-who. Vanquished the Dark Lord. Vanquisher of Voldemort. Blastedboy. Hesavedusall. Heropowerfulweakmistakenothingofimportanceprophecizedchildheirtothehouseofpotterharrypotterharrypotter._

That unnerved him. The voices knew of him, beyond just his name. They called him a hero in reverential tones and a mistake in a voice with more acid than Uncle Vernon the few times he had done something “freaky”.

They knew him, Harry Potter, the son of two drunk, good-for-nothing people, if he believed his aunt and uncle. Which he tried not to believe, but without his parents here and having never heard anything else about them, it was hard to see them as anything else. He had lost his hope for his parents being heroes and coming to save him years ago.

But for all the fear, the voices were useful. They gave him information, told him of things like ‘Hogwarts’ and ‘Diagon Alley.’

They mentioned things about houses, symbols, and what he could only assumed the names of those houses. Those whispers where his least favourite. They were passionate about the subject to say the least. Everything one of them said was contradicted multiple times by multiple others at least. Agreement about anything to do with it was very hard to come by. So, he avoided that topic and hoped it would never come up again.

Then they talked about what he thought was the most important, a place called the Leaky Cauldron, which was in London, and the alley behind it, which led to _the Wizarding World_.

The problem was he had no way of getting to London, much less finding it within London until the voices finally gave him the information he needed. Therefore, his plan to visit was on hold at the moment.

So, while the other power a little creepy and potentially life threatening, and the voices were as helpful as they threatening to his well-being with how very distracting they were. Which led him to his current predicament of being locked in his cupboard for the night trying desperately to realign the bones in the fingers of his right hand.

He had been too distracted listening to the voices whisper about magical creatures to pay attention to his cousin’s increasingly cruel look in his eyes and on his face, much less notice he was approaching. This wasn’t something he hadn’t noticed in years, usually he was so aware of his surroundings that he could tell when a bird landed on the fence across the yard.

So, when the shadow of his cousin blocked the sun from his eyes, he knew that he was in for some pain.

And pain it was.

Dudley had purposely stepped on the fingers of his right hand from where they sat in the soil of the garden, laughing. Since, he weighed about the same as a small whale in his opinion, his fingers groaned and then snapped with a sickening crack.

At that moment, Harry had wanted to set him on fire and see him burn. See how high his cousin’s screams could go as fire licked at his skin and caused it to melt. See how he liked the pain.

But Harry restrained his anger, it wasn’t the worse pain he had ever had and he would survive, but it was one that would last.

***

His fingers still ached when he curled them into a fist and they now sat more crooked than they had before, but they worked fine for what he needed.

What he _needed_ was to figure out how to get to gain a semblance of control over the Doorway before he had another Bird Incident or lost himself to the whispers again.

That is what had led him to standing in a secluded corner of the park beside a small grove of trees, trying to avoid his cousin’s attention.

His first goal was to locate something dead. This was not something he was looking forward too, as he didn’t think he would be able to find anything quickly and, well, it would be _dead_.

There weren’t many wild animals near Privet Drive to begin with, and, as Mrs.Figg’s cat population seemingly multiplying frequently, any small animals that had been here had been hunted to extinction years ago. 

It took him multiple trips to the park and countless time spent hiding from Dudley until he finally came across something dead, and it wasn’t even at the _park_.

Like come on, he spent all that time digging through the dirt with his sore fingers, looking under bushes, and peering into holes while trying to avoid his cousin’s attention, only to find a something dead in the bushes beside his house.

He almost missed it, it was so small. Barely the size of the matches he used to light the candles Aunt Petunia like to burn when guests were over. At first it looked like a mouse with dark, golden-brown fur and a dark face, but on closer inspection he realized it had wings.

A bat.

A bat in his garden.

A _dead_ bat in his garden.

In his opinion, the only thing more cliché he could have found to experiment his powers on was a black cat, but it wasn’t like he was having any luck finding anything else dead and it was in relatively good condition if you asked him.

Nothing like the bird at least.

The only thing he could see that was wrong with it was its ripped wing. It had probably hit something or maybe a cat had gotten it briefly. Whatever had happened to it had torn up its wing bad enough that it couldn’t fly with it, leading it to being stranded on the ground unable to find food.

It had starved to death.

That realization gave him a burst of pity, he knew how painful hunger was and he knew it wouldn’t be a nice or peaceful way to die.

He had thought about it being his death often enough to realize that.

But dead was dead, at least for now.

He carefully picked it up and tucked it into a spare piece of fabric he had prepared for this moment. It wasn’t heavy at all and he was scared he would accidentally squish it, but he couldn’t risk someone coming and finding him with it. He didn’t want to even think about what that punishment would be.

So, he carefully placed it in his pocket, and went back to work on the flowers.

Tonight.

Tonight, he would try to purposely bring something back.

Maybe the Doorway would stop being so restless and consuming if he did.

*******

That night secluded in his cupboard, he waited for the snores of Uncle Vernon before he risked pulling the bat from its cloth bed.

He didn’t dare experiment on this when anyone was awake, even if he knew they wouldn’t open his cupboard for hours. It was too much of a risk.

It sat snuggly in his hands. Its fur was softer than he expected, and the lack of weight still surprised him.

Small, cold, rigid.

Dead.

Curse his curiosity, what was he even _doing_. It is not like he _had_ to try and bring it back to life, but he had it in his hands and he wanted to see if he could. To confirm that what happened with the bird was not a figment of his imagination.

He reached for the Doorway and pulled a very small strand of power, icy and burning and flowing, from it.

Nothing happened.

Maybe he needed more power for it to work.

He reached inside and pulled more power from the Doorway.

Nothing.

It still sat in his hands, small and cold and rigid.

Motionless.

Dead.

Again, and again, he tried, yet the bat didn’t stir.

He was growing frustrated. He knew the bird had come back. He knew he hadn’t imagined it. He knew it was the Doorway that did it. He knew it would work. So, why wasn’t it working? What was going wrong?

Time after time, failure.

If it was a lack of power it wouldn’t be for much longer.

He reached for the power behind the Doorway, ignoring the cacophony of voices that suddenly started to howl, and _yanked_.

Far more power than he had used any time before. Too much power. And all directed to the little bat sitting still in his hands.

A river, fast and strong and deceptively deep, flowed from that Doorway, down his arm, through his hand, and finally, into the bat.

The voices fell silent, the Doorway became still, ice filled his veins.

Its chest started to move again. Its ears twitched. Its wings stirred.

It once more became a part of the living world.

He had done it. He had brought something back to life, stolen it away from death.

It worked. He had a formerly dead bat now breathing and living in his hands.

Now what?


	6. Chapter 6

_If you can fight your way free from this desolate isolation that cause far too many of us to meet Death before our time, then you face another challenge. Our powers are directly linked to something far great than us, something that does not like being caged, restrained, or unused. As soon as it is disturbed it will not slumber again, be prepared and consider the consequences before you awaken it. Any attempt to deny that you are a Necromancer after this, to deny what is in your blood and soul, will end in failure. It is too hungry for that. The less you use it the more likely it is to slip from your grasp and risk your exposure. The basic Necromantic constructions that it Raises are the most likely way for this to happen, as it is the most noticeable of our many powers. It needs to be used._

_Unlike with our magical cousins, the problem with our power sits, not in actively having to continuously pull on our power to use it, but in stopping the flow of power once it begins. Our powers are like the primordial rivers that carved the caves of this earth. Old and endless and constantly eroding away any barrier that is created. I recommend Raising something large but simple and freshly dead fairly frequently in order to release some of the power. Before you do so, you MUST finish this book and follow the instructions within. Raising something on purpose is rather easy once the basics are understood but control over the Raised and putting it back to rest afterwards is the most challenging part. The more complex a being you Raise the less control you will have over it without practice, and the longer it remains linked to you the harder it will be to stop the flow of power. Eventually, cutting the link will no longer be possible and you will no longer will be a single entity, but a being with two bodies. Every time you Raise something you are creating an extension of yourself, don’t let these extensions become permanent._

*******

Harry took a shuttering breath, one after another, as he stared at the bat.

Now it was the time to freak out.

It had been dead, and now it lived.

Its chest moved, its heart beat, it lived.

This was not something that supposed to be done or to happen, even by the wizards in his novels.

Those to which it did occur, those practitioners who rose the dead, had bloody endings and tragic stories.

Death was not something people could mess with without consequences. Even he knew that.

Every mention of the dead coming back to life he had ever found had preluded disaster or further death and was almost always done by the bad guy or by the desperate. 

The cost for such actions were too high to fathom, too bloody to consider, too unnatural for even those with magic.

And, now, he held the living dead in his hands.

What had he done? What forces had he invoked? What consequences would rise from this? Would disaster befall his life? Would death stalk his heels, those around him meeting gruesome ends? Should fire and flood shake the Earth?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t wish to find out.

He would just cut the connection between it and him, bury it in the garden, and forget this ever happened.

He would hide the evidence, beseech the fates that this was an accident that did not deserve punishment.

He was so stupid. He was so caught up in the fact he could bring it back, that he didn’t even think about what would happen after. He had read the stories about the dead walking again, about the violence they wrought and the pain they inflicted. The living dead in all the stories are violent entities, liable to attack anything that moves.

He should have known better.

What was dead, was dead and should stay dead.

What right did he have to bring it back in the first place? Who was he to decide if something should live again?

And now. Now he had to figure out how to fix this problem he had gotten himself into.

At least this- this _thing_ hadn’t tried to attack him or bite him or anything. It didn’t act like a bat and it didn’t act like the things in his stories, but that didn’t mean it _wouldn’t_.

But for now, it just climbed around his hand, small with almost no weight, and stared at him like it knew something he didn’t, like it could judge his _soul_.

He had to cut the connection.

He reached inside of him and found that river of power between it and him to be thick and fast and strong.

It was corpse cold and pyre hot, every time he touched the connection he felt like ash and blood was wiping itself off onto his skin. Burrowing in deep and staining it forever.

He tried to yank it back, to block it, to sever it.

Nothing worked.

He tried again and again and again, until he was panting and panicking. Eyes-wide, chest heaving, frozen to the bone with dread.

He no longer controlled the power within him, it no longer bent to his will.

This was unlike his magic, it didn’t seem to need him to continue to work at all.

He stared at the bat and the bat stared back, eyes too knowing to have anything but a human’s intelligence.

He messed up and it seemed as if he now had an undead bat to deal with, because if someone saw it he would be the one that was dead.

He would be dead and dust, broken and bloodied, because they would surely kill him for doing something so freakish, something so unnatural. They would leave his body in the cupboard forgotten for the rest of eternity, or perhaps dump him in a forest somewhere for the animals to eat after death, or maybe just bury him in the garden out back letting his corpse rot in the soil.

He had to fix this, to hide it, to make it go away.

He could try and, well, kill it. It was small enough he could crush it easily, or he could just- just a quick- a quick fire and flames would work. That would probably put it back to rest and stop his powers.

But what if it _didn’t_ , and he had to deal with something mangled and bleeding and broken getting up and walking around. As it was now it at least looked like it should be alive and breathing.

Did he even have it in his heart to be able kill it with his bare hands? To listen to its bones crack as it was crushed, its cries as it burned? He didn’t think he could.

A mad laughter rose in his chest, quiet and low and echoing around the confines of this cupboard. It was the same kind of laughter a man spitting in the face of death made when he realized he had survived but now had to deal with the fallout of that decision.

Why had he done this? Why had he brought it back into this beautifully cruel world only to kill it minutes later? Had he brought it back just to torture it more? To show it how cruel the world could be?

It was alive.

It was _alive_ because of him, and now he was responsible for it.

Responsible for this small life he held in his hands like he was some sort of _god_.

Could he endure shrugging off his responsibility in recreating life and just end it moments later?

He felt eyes of judgement on his back. Incorporeal eyes, human and inhuman, staring, unblinking, judging. The Doorway was silent, thousands of eyes rested on him, thousands sought to see what kind of being he was.

Was he cruel? Was he kind? Could he kill something that had never done anything to him?

No, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t stomach to kill it. He wasn’t cruel enough to do that. Not cruel enough to kill something that reminded him of himself.

Something small, and starved, and broken.

He took a shuttering breath.

This meant that if anything bad happened because he had messed with death, it would be his responsibility to deal with it. But maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it to have a friend, something to care if he continued to breath, even if it was a bat that he had just resurrected himself. 

How pathetic was that, his first friend and he had to make it himself. Had to steal it away from death.

At least it was small and easy to hide. Something that would blend into his hair and could cling to him as he walked.

He reached a hand out to that connection between him and the bat, instead of trying to break it this time, he tried to smooth down the rough edges he had tried to tear away. His hand connected and suddenly he was submerged.

His heart was beating faster than it ever had. His bones felt smaller, lighter. Uncle Vernon’s snores were amplified, strange high pitched chirps came from outside, a hum was coming from somewhere.

There was a mass in front of him, large and towering, a connection between it and him.

He yanked himself back, wide-eyed, hands flinging out as he dropped the bat onto his cot.

What was that?

What had just happened?

He- he hadn’t been himself.

That- whatever _that_ was- was something else to explore on a different day.

The bat crawled over to him and began to climb up to cling on him. From where it sat, he could see the rips in the wing.

If he was going to keep it, he would have to heal it. Could it even heal itself? What did being resurrected entail?

Either way, he could fix this himself. He had healed some of his small cuts with his magic, this shouldn’t be too different.

Pulling on his magic he focused on the connection between it and him, and made it flow over the connection, like ice over a running stream.

Heal it, he demanded. Heal it, he intended. “Heal it,” he whispered.

With eyes locked on the bat, he saw the rip ripple and start to close, a greenish-blue glow so faint that it wouldn’t have been seen if he wasn’t in his dark cupboard outlined the wound.

Slowly and hesitantly, the wing became whole again. The blue gave way to green, a flare of light, then it faded, leaving behind a distinct pattern of lighter lines, like lightning in a summer storm, on the membrane.

The bat’s scar was a healed over wound, a show of survival, a wound that looked like it had been healed for many moons at this point.

Harry slumped over exhausted. His eyes slid shut and his last thoughts before sleep took him was that if he was to keep it, he couldn’t keep calling it, it or thing or bat. It needed a name. He knew what it was like to not have one, or at least think he didn’t have one thanks to the Dursleys.

He also needed to figure out if he needed to feed it, and what type of bat it was.

And most of all how to hide it.

Why did he always have to give himself more work?

*******

Another year had passed, and Harry Potter felt like the past year had been both the best so far, which isn’t that much of an accomplishment, and the worst.

Yes, he finally had a something that cared that he existed, that didn’t hate him, that didn’t look at him like they wanted him dead. And this, this made him feel like he was invincible.

Even if it was just a bat that he had resurrected himself.

His bat, named Styx after the river in the underworld, the boundary between this world and the next, was a female pipistrelle bat.

Or she was according to the book he found in the library.

She was the most common of the bat species in England and, technically, a protected species. Which mean him having her was slightly illegal, but he figured that since she was dead when he found her, and he brought her back, he was technically protecting the species by keeping her.

‘Plus,’ he figured, ‘I think resurrecting her was far more illegal than keeping her.’

She stuck close to him, often hiding in his baggy clothing or in his hair, which he had to grow longer to help hide her. His hair was now down to his chin in untameable waves and curls that still refused to settle in any normal hair style. It was an ever more frequent source of mockery and hateful taunts from his aunt.

And, thankfully, she did not need to eat, because he had tried to catch her small insects to eat at first, but it turns out insect catching was not one of his powers.

Though, since she stayed so closed to him, he has also been forced to learn how to run faster and hide far better than he had before. He can’t risk Dudley or his gang catching him and seeing Styx. It was too much of a risk to both her and his continued health if he failed.

In addition to that, he also had to learn how to hold his tongue, to complete everything the Dursleys told him to do on time and correctly, to ignore the pain as they hit him, to not dodge the first hits in order to avoid further ones, to not fight back.

Every time he had held his tongue, took undeserved punishment without protest, he felt rage rise within him, it threatened to burst out of him and show his relatives what he could really do, but the reminder that he couldn’t risk them looking too closely at him and finding her, couldn’t risk Styx getting hurt in order to avoid some pain to himself, helped reign it in.

He was too young, too small, too dependent, to be able to fight back and leave right now.

This didn’t mean he didn’t fail to follow his self-imposed orders sometimes, but he had to learn out of necessity.

He had to now choose either ignoring his pride and keeping his friend safe or being brave and risking Styx.

This wasn’t much of a choice for him.

He had learned early to calculate the cost of each action, and to pick only the battles he knew he would win. Just now the cost of the battles were higher since the only thing in the world that cared about him and he cared about in turn was at risk.

Even in the odd times when she was not close to him, he always knew where she was. It was like she had a beacon attached to her that only he could find.

He had also been trying to get a hang of tapping into the connection between them, but it was disorientating to interpret her echolocation and try to see a three dimensional picture out of it. It was also hard trying to match noises he had never heard before to things he couldn’t find with his sight. It was a slow going effort, but he continued to try. Nothing felt better than flying with wings.

The restless feeling under his skin had settled some in the months following her rebirth, and he was thankful for that small reprieve. But, he could tell it was building again. And this time was determined not to permanently resurrect something.

As much as he loved Styx, it was too much of a risk to himself to have another thing tied to him, even if it was small. It was a risk purposely resurrecting something anyways, but a risk he thought he would have to take soon if he didn’t figure out some control over this Doorway soon, or he knew there would be a risk of it raising something big where people could see.

A risk of it causing his death for doing so.

As such, his number one goal was to get himself to Diagon Alley, find resources to let him gain control of his power, and figure out how to prevent his family from seeing him use any of it.

Since, his magic was also growing as well and causing problems.

He could create enough small lights in his room that it looked like he had pulled down the stars to reside with them. Create small forms no bigger than Styx out of fire, that danced and twirled and moved to his commands in a rainbow of coloured flames. But this also meant that when he got angry or upset, small spontaneous fires started near him or he would find that when he unclenched his hands later that evening in the safety of his cupboard there would be small burns running along it from the flames he had subconsciously summoned.

His magic allowed him to do more than it had before, but it also responded to his call far easier than before.

Easier to use, and easier to detect.

But the most useful skill he had acquired, was the ability to unlock his cupboard door from the _inside_.

Which meant he could sneak out when everyone was asleep and grab some food he knew no one would miss, just enough so he wouldn’t starve.

It was during these nighttime survival mission that he also spent time to gather the forgotten pieces of money, to prepare to get himself to London. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve at least something from his family after all these years.

The only reason he knew he had gotten away with this were that the Dursleys were not the smartest of people and they just assumed Dudley had taken some when they noticed it missing. They were also too secure in their knowledge that the locks on his cupboard’s door would keep him locked inside of it. That he was useless. Which meant he had gained quite a haul from his nighttime collection efforts.

‘Enough,’ he thinks, ‘to maybe get some books once I get to Diagon Alley, as well as catching the train there and back again.’

After all, he had also finally figured out the general location of where the Leaky Cauldron was in London. Somewhere near Trafalgar Square. But that was a good enough of a location that he could risk going, he was getting desperate. Since, the voices had been less than helpful, and it had taken him a _year_ longer than he wanted to find out where it was.

‘What use is having voices in your head to give you information, if all they do is contradicted each other,’ he brooded. ‘Useless, is what they are. I don’t even know what to expect when I get there. Does everyone where pointed hats like the books say? Or do they dress like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia? Well, I guess that doesn’t really matter, I’m going to stick out in Dudley’s hand-me-downs no matter what. But it would have been nice to have an idea of what to expect.’

But a little bit of risk and a bit of fear from willingly walking into the unknown was worth seeing the world he belonged to and finding something to help him.

He knew what he needed to do to get to London and knew how long the trip there and back would take. He just needed to find a time that no one would notice him missing for hours on end. And some luck, since he knew he was bound to stick out no matter what with his long hair, larger clothing, and smaller than usual size for his age.

But hard work and persistence had been his companions for as long as he remembered.

He would make it. He would find a way.

*******

His aunt’s voice had taken on a stiff, less than please but still polite tone, as her conversation with the neighbour, Mrs.Figg, on the phone came to an end. He risked a glance at her face. It was pinched, and her lips pursed. She was definitely angry, angry enough that he would have been preparing to take a hit if it was directed at him, but she was the perfectly normal and polite neighbour to everyone else in the neighbourhood, and kept her feelings mostly out of her voice as she finished talking to Mrs.Figg.

This might be his chance.

Finally, she hung up the phone and turned to his uncle, shooting a glare his way as she caught sight of him in the corner.

“Vernon dear, Figg can’t take the boy.” Another glare to where he stood, watching and waiting, “She’s visiting her niece for the next few days,” Aunt Petunia’s tone was as if he had just ruined her year.

Though, come to think of it that was usually her tone when talking about him.

A voice sounded from were Uncle Vernon sat, angry and loud, Harry tensed as Uncle Vernon shouted, “Can’t she just take the freak with her? I won’t let him ruin Dudley’s day today with his presence. The boy is bound to cause all sorts of trouble.”

Harry started to brace himself, turning his body so that the side of his body hid Styx as she crawled down him silently, following his commands to fly out the open window as the rest of his family was distracted.

He was bound to have bruises by the end of this conversation and wanted Styx to be as far away as possible before it started.

“I asked, and she said she couldn’t. I don’t want to bring him with us any more than you do, but if we leave him here he is bound to destroy the house when we’re gone,” his aunt’s acid tone replied.

“But I don’t want the Freak to come with us,” Dudley shouted and started to stamp his feet, looking more like a toddler than anything, “He’ll ruin my day! I don’t want him to come!”

Yes, come on listen to Dudley. Leave him here and go.

“Dudders, we’ll get you the new game you wanted to make up for his presence,” Aunt Petunia bargained. The thought of Harry in the house by himself conjuring images of destruction and chaos.

But Harry knew Dudley was too set in his opinion on this, he had been bragging about going to the beach to Harry for days now. For Harry to come, was to ruin the trip.

“NO! I don’t want the Freak to come!” Dudley wailed.

Finally, his Uncle Vernon interjected, “If we lock him up with an extra lock on the door, it will make sure he stays put and causes no trouble. We’ll put a bucket in there, so he doesn’t have to leave it.” Finally, he was never more thankful to hear his Uncle talk about locking him in the cupboard. “But I’ll make sure he knows not to try anything.”

There was a dark look in his uncle’s eyes when he glanced at him, this ‘obedience warning’ might hurt more than usual because Dudley was upset.

The pain would be worth it though.

*******

It was later that day, that Harry found himself sitting stiffly in his cupboard. He thinks his uncle actually managed to break a rib this time, he could already see the bruises over his ribs turning dark.

But he wasn’t bruising anywhere that was immediately visible as long as no one rolled up the sleeves of his shirt or looked under the collar. He would be fine, no one would notice.

He had sent Styx away earlier when he knew a beating was coming, her job was to tug on the connection to alert him when the Dursleys left the neighbourhood.

Then, and only then, he would be safe to leave the cupboard and put his plan in motion to head to London.

He dosed on and off, eyes open but unseeing, rigid and upright, waiting.

Losing himself between his body and a body with air beneath its wings.

Then a tug on that connection from Styx, they were gone, and she was coming back.

A smile curved his lips upwards just a small bit.

Time to go.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the locks on his door, there was an additional one now, so he knew it would be harder this time than before.

He pushed the pain to the side, concentrated, and, _there,_ open.

He gingerly got out of his cupboard, taking his stash of money with him from where he had hidden it in the small space between the beams that make up the roof of the cupboard and the side of the wall.

He carefully made his way up to Dudley’s room and grabbed the smallest pieces of clothing he could find, at the very back of his closet.

This would help him blend in a little more.

The were smaller than the ones Dudley wore nowadays, but still three sizes too large on him, which was better than the ones he currently wore that were about five times too big.

He slipped on the black pants, rolling up the cuffs quite a few times, and stiffly pulled on the dark blue shirt. He tucked the excess into the pants and grabbed the cleanest long piece of fabric from the rags he used to clean to tie as a belt around his waist to prevent the pants from falling down. He couldn’t do anything about the shoes though, Dudley’s were even bigger than the ones he currently wore.

He grabbed his book bag for school, a precaution in case he got anything on his trip.

Observing himself in the mirror as he walked past it. He found that looked much better than he did in his previous clothing, but still looked far too small to be out alone.

He couldn’t change that.

Now the hard part, to get out of the neighbourhood without anyone seeing him, or they will definitely tell his aunt and uncle and he would be facing further broken bones and starvation when they returned.

He knew the Dursleys would be gone for three days, his plan consisted of him leaving the house under the cover of night and making it to London in darkness. Then, to spend the second day in Diagon Alley and return that night, once more in darkness.

*******

Darkness. The setting for all forms of horror stories and daring tales. One of his longest companions.

And now his partner-in-crime.

The sun had set hours before, and he had waited long enough for everyone to close their blinds and for most to head to bed. It was time to leave.

He opened the front door and walked out, Styx was waiting for him. She landed on his head and immediately started to burrow under the hair tucked behind his ear. She usually sat there, she was small enough that no one noticed the difference between her and his hair, and light enough that it didn’t pull on his ear uncomfortably where she gripped it.

“Hi Styx,” he whispered, “it’s time for us to go. Are you ready?”

He didn’t wait for a reply from her, he knew there wouldn’t be one, and set as fast as a pace away from the house he could do without jostling his ribs too much.

Pain would not stop him from completing this journey, not even death would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to say thank you for everyone's kind comments and kudos!


	7. Chapter 7

_Some of us learn this by being taught by others, others through desperation and panic, but mostly we learn through experimentation. As it has become necessary for us to hide ourselves away, to hide our powers, we have become recluses. Taught by ourselves and from our mistakes. Not many of us gain the courage necessary to rejoin the wider world that would see us destroyed and dead where we sleep, and not often do we live long enough to gain a choice to even do so. But those of us who do, who can control their powers to such a degree that they can walk amongst the others with no fear, who have lived long enough and overcome their hardships, will find a world greater than the one most other’s see. We can seek the advice of those long past, we can see the events that have led to this point, find things hidden by those long since dead and lost to time, we know the secrets that the dead brought to their graves. There are things greater than us just waiting to be rediscovered._

*******

It was disturbingly easy to get himself to London in the middle of the night.

With only street lamps to light his path, Harry had been thankful that his eyes could see better than most in the dark, a by-product of his time spent under the stairs.

Privet Drive was different in the middle of the night. The shadows more ominous, its silence eerie, its emptiness unnerving.

He could swear he saw creatures moving from shadow to shadow, tree to tree, bush to bush, things besides Mrs.Figg’s cats. Their limbs were too long, the shadows just a bit _too_ connected with them, but he couldn’t be sure that what he was seeing wasn’t just a trick of the light.

Other times he saw small balls of light, quite like the ones he could create, leading into the forested area just outside Privet Drive.

Perhaps, Privet Drive is more magical than it appears.

Ignoring these occurrences and making sure to hide when he thought he saw _someone,_ instead of something, walking towards him allowed Harry to make it to the train station without any problems.

But when he reached the train station it was at a time that was well past midnight. A time that no attendant would sell a child looking as young as he did a ticket. This made him worried about his chances to catch the train.

He shouldn’t have worried.

The attendant that sold him his ticket didn’t even look at him. She was younger, probably near the end of her teenage years or the start of her twenties, but too sleep deprived and uncaring to even think twice about why she was selling a ten year old, who looked 8 at most, a train ticket to the heart of London.

Her sleep deprivation was his benefit, and in the empty train station he waited in silence with only the echoing of his breathing breaking the stillness for the train to arrive.

There was no other living being in the terminal but him. No guards were there, which was a surprise, and no people waiting for the same train, just him, his ticket, and Styx.

Lonely travellers trying to find the answers they sought.

When the train finally arrived, he was almost asleep on his feet. Swaying and eyelids drooping, he forced himself to move and board the train. This lack of sleep hit him particularly hard when he rode the train, the soft sounds of it moving and slight movements lulling him into a doze. To try and fend off the sleep weighing him down and threatening to close his eyes fully, he spent his time creating back stories for the few other occupants on the train.

The older man, with a cane in his hand and a far off look in his eyes, was trying to run from the ghosts that haunted his steps and was searching for peace.

The two teenagers, in the corner whispering with each other, were trying to find a new place they could belong, running from one that refused to let them be themselves.

The girl with bright makeup and glitter on her cheeks was coming home after a long day spent partying with her friends and looking for a way to hide from her parents where she had been.

They were all searching for something, they had all been somewhere, they all had stories to tell.

He thinks he would like to have some stories of his own one day. Stories that were greater than his cupboard, greater than the one person book his life was currently writing.

When he reached his stop in the heart of London, it was still dark, illuminated with only the streetlights, but not silent.

There were still people walking across the streets, laughing, talking. On Privet Drive the world was dead at this time of night, here not so much. There was human life, excitement and experiences to be had.

The downside to this livelihood is that he had to be more careful to get where he was going and not to be seen or caught trying to find Trafalgar Square. He didn’t even have time to check the map in the train station before he had to leave, it was full of life and had guards that would question why he was all alone at this time of night.

He was so close, and he refused to lose now.

He spent the next few hours, wandering around London. Ducking into alleys and under bushes and into the shadows every time he saw someone walking towards him. Catching glimpses of things out of the corners of his eyes, glimpses of people and things that when he turned to look at them weren’t there anymore.

His feet were sore, his ribs had only gotten worse from earlier, and he was tired.

But answers were so close to his grasp.

Finally, he sent Styx off flying, not even bothering to dive into the connection between them and experience what she was. He knew that she would find the square and lead him too it without his input. She was smarter than any normal bat anyways.

He sat on the cobbled ground and watched the world go by as he waited. Mice skittered across the roads, and foxes ran from one area to the next searching for food. Above his head bats like Styx flew from one overhang to the next, picking bugs out of the air, moths and other insects congregated near the street lamps.

He breathed as deeply as his ribs would let him, at peace for the first time in his life.

This was proof that there was a world waiting for him out here.

There were animals to see and things to marvel at.

He couldn’t wait to be old enough to leave.

To pack up what he owned in a bag, set his feet to the ground, and just start walking, never having to return to number 4, Privet Drive, again. To go swimming with fishes of every colour, to watch the multicoloured birds of the Amazon fly, to see the lions of Africa.

There was a world out there and he wanted to see it.

When Styx returned, what seemed like a lifetime and a second later, he knew she had found it.

She led him down side streets and across paths, back the way he had come. Apparently, he had walked the opposite direction when he had left the station. That was just like his luck.

There.

The fountain. The lions. Styx had found Trafalgar Square.

One step closer to Diagon Alley.

Now, to find it from here.

He knew it was close but not how close, but Styx was apparently smarter than him and had already thought of this problem.

She hadn’t landed back in his hair yet and continued to hover in front of him as her fellow bats flew above their heads, tugging at the connection between them until he got the message and start to follow her.

She led him past the fountain and the National Gallery, down the street to a shabby little run down building between two stores.

This was the Leaky Cauldron? He had expected it to be more- more- just more than this.

Had he gotten it wrong? He didn’t think so, but the voices weren’t always the most trust worthy.

But he was here now, and he might as well try.

Styx landed back behind his ear and he shifted his hair to cover her, he couldn’t risk anyone seeing her. Not until he knew how the magical world would react to her. Would react to him, a child without any adult around.

His plan was to keep his head down and ask as few questions as he could in order to not draw attention to himself. To be like the ghost he had always thought himself to be.

In keeping with this idea, he would wait until another walked into the building. Then hidden in the person’s shadows, he would follow behind them.

This would keep the people inside from noticing Harry’s presence as the first thing they would focus on would be the other person walking in front of him. And if they did notice, they would just think he was with them.

He would rather they didn’t waylay him with question he didn’t have the answer to and attention he didn’t want.

Finally, after sitting in the shadows of a small alcove in the buildings across the street, anticipation filling his body and growing restless, someone approached the building. It seemed like it had been hours he had been waiting, it was certainly very early in the morning now, with the sun almost reaching the horizon, the night lightening to a softer blue, when someone walked up to the doors and into the building.

He forced his stiff body up, ignored the pain from his ribs as he did, and ran across the street, fast enough that he was able to squeeze into the building before the door shut.

There were a few people scattered around the room and at the counter there was an older woman drying dishes, but no one looked up as they entered.

The man he had followed strode across the room, and exited into a back courtyard, walled in on all sides by old bricks.

Did he just follow someone into a dead end? There was nothing here but brick walls. He had to have gotten it wrong.

Then. Then something _magical_ happened.

The man had pulled a thin stick of wood out from his pocket and tapped it on the wall.

The bricks started to move, pulling themselves apart from each other to form an archway and he gasped.

Finally, magic that wasn’t his own.

This had shown him proof that he had somewhere to belong. That he wasn’t actually alone in the world.

He walked through the archway as fast as he could without bumping into the man he had followed. He didn’t want it to close on him and cut him off from the street beyond.

Then he stopped and stared.

He could feel a hum beneath his feet and the same static tingle in the air that preluded a summer storm.

_Magic_.

It saturated every inch of this place, both awake and slumbering but, more importantly, _here_.

An echo of hundreds of thousands of people’s magic, of their wishes and desires, of their life and death. It sat here as a monument to Diagon Alley’s creation and its life. It ebbed and flowed, rose and fell, like the ocean’s tide and the chest of a slumbering giant.

It branched out from this point in multiple directions, connecting this heartbeat to others throughout the country and the world.

Magic lived here. In this long cobbled street that stretched out in front of him.

Buildings, untidy and crooked and uniquely, undeniable _magical_ , lined either side of the street.

There was an apothecary directly to one side of him, its front windows filled with all sorts of things he had never heard or seen before, signs proclaimed ingredients like Ashwinder Eggs, Flobberworm Mucus, and Acromantula venom which was going for one hundred _Galleons_ a pint. There was so much he was going to need to learn, so much he wanted to learn.

And he finally understood what the voices were talking about when they had said Galleons. Apparently, the money used in the- normal? Abnormal?- non-magical world was not used here.

Which meant that he now had to figure out how they converted the money he had into these Galleons, so he could actually buy some books.

He reached for the voices and thought about banks and money and Galleons.

And they answered.

_Gringotts._

Came the resounding first answer, echoed by dozens of other voices.

_Vaults. White. Knuts. Sickles. Inheritance. Greedy. Goblins. Inferior. Creatures. Rebellions. Thief, you have been warned. Safestplaceintheworld. Themoneywasmine. Nononoletmeoutletmeout. ImsorryIregrettryingtostealpleasepleaseletmeout._

He shut them off again.

Gringotts. That’s what he needed to find.

He walked further into the alley, feeling the magic thrum under his feet and his gaze darting from one thing to the next.

The people he could see were dressed in robes, which, okay, a little old-fashion and out of place in today’s society, but he could understand it. Fashion was always weird. But it did mean he stuck out even worse than he thought he would before, even after putting thought into a way of making himself look more presentable.

And there were all kinds of shops. Each seemed to hold more inside of it from what he could see than what he thought should actually be able to fit inside of it, but then again, this entire street didn’t fit on a map of London. Could they manipulate the land and space around it?

There was so much he wanted to explore. So much he wanted to learn.

Each building was unique and from what he could see in the windows he was very much out of his depth in the new world, and it could only be a new world for it was nothing like the old one.

The old one still had a heartbeat, still thrummed with the echoes of tales engrained into its ground by the people who walked it, but it was older and more sluggish. Like the magic that had made this street hadn’t been used freely there for many years.

The old world’s ground was still, a primordial force too large to move and had resigned itself to a deathlike slumber. This world’s ground was a growth atop of it, young compared to the thing that slumbered beneath it and old to the world atop, it rose and fell, exploring and reaching, moving in tune with the people who called upon it for help.

This was a new world, a new place, a new life.

It was freedom.

But first he had to figure out what this freedom entailed, and what this new world had for him to explore.

Like what were all those ingredients at the apothecary, and what types of robes are needed to fit in, and how much was a Galleon to a pound, and what were the traditions of this new world, and- was that a gold cauldron? Why was it made out of gold? Is it important to be made out of gold? Does he even have enough money to buy anything if a gold cauldron is the norm?

Now, he was panicking a little. Overwhelmed by the onslaught of realizing just what he needed to know and how little he actually knew.

How much was the money he had now compared to a Galleon? Did he have enough to be able to buy books that would allow him to find his footing in this new world?

He closed his eyes, centered himself, breathed deeply, opened his eyes and exhaled.

He had made the dead walk again, created figures out of fire, and summoned galaxies in his cupboard. He would figure this out like he had with his powers.

One step at a time, one breath after another, one heartbeat in the wake of the one before it.

Time to keep going.

There was an entire shop for owls, feathered in every colour they watched him with fluffed up feathers as he walk past. Surprisingly they didn’t make any noise nor try and fly way as he walked past. Maybe the reason all other animals did so was because they could sense he was magical? Either way it made him feel a little better, the owls provided just a little more proof that he belonged here. But he wondered what they were -Wait, what was that?

Was that?

It was.

A broom.

A literal flying _broomstick_.

Is the magical population trying to live up to the stereotypes? Was pointed hats a form of accessory here as well? Did the stories of witches riding on brooms come before or after they started to create these? And what was Quidditch?

But still, a flying broomstick. Couldn’t they have created something that isn’t just a stick of wood to fly with? He didn’t know if he could trust a broom to hold him off the ground and keep him from falling. Not after he had experienced flight with wings.

He could accept the cauldrons, the robes, and the apothecary, but he draws the line at brooms. He had absolutely no interest in following the stereotypes of magical people in his novels, none at all. After all, he could still remember the stereotypical raiser of the dead within those same books. He refused to give in to it and be the source of evil like they depicted.

Before Harry could think further on the subject of broomsticks a building came into view.

Tall and imposing, a winter white building towered over the stores surrounding it.

That was Gringotts.


	8. Chapter 8

_You will find no books about this nor true Necromancy overall if you venture into the magical world. We are labelled creatures to be put to Death and any form of Necromancy is outlawed in many of the societies. I have seen my kith and kin being burned alive for having these powers, I remember their screams. They killed them in our house, burnt it down with them inside. My daughter was only three. They didn’t care. We are a symbol of bad luck and misfortune, a reminder that life is fleeting. They fear our powers and seek to destroy us before harm can befall them. Stories told of us, passed down from elder to child, tell that our birth is the prelude to an era of death and war and pestilence and famine. To survive they decide to sacrifice the few to save the whole. They wish to eradicate us from memories, do away with anything that the world can remember of us, they have rounded up the books that didn’t burn when their owners did and burned them as well._

*******

Gringotts was far more imposing than he expected it to be.

It was the tallest building around it, and from where he stood it seemed to cast a shadow on everything in its vicinity.

It gave off an air of impatience, an intensity of things waiting to happen, competence in everything it did.

Gringotts was far more than a place to exchange his money.

Its pristine white walls and marble steps screamed riches and an unspoken threat to those who would dare challenge it.

In his borrowed, oversized clothing, Harry felt as if he did not belong to the group of people who would find themselves walking up these steps.

This was a building built for those with money aplenty, and for a boy used to eating the scraps off plates, for a boy who had never owned anything that was his first, for a boy who lived in a cupboard, this was the opposite of everything he ever was.

What drew his eyes were the words on the doors, a poem warning any thief away. It contained a line the voices had whispered to him, and he suddenly felt like the deterrent to thieves in these halls were far more fatal than the ones in other banks. Thief, take heed, indeed. They could have just said that you will die if you try to steal something instead of making an entire poem, but to each there own.

There were guards on either side of the doors, but he didn’t dare glance at them. To do so would make it look like he was nervous, like he didn’t belong.

As he walked through the doors, he started, steps faltering, these must be the goblins the voices meant.

They were short, shorter than him, sharp teeth, and gave off an air that meant you shouldn’t waste their time, of barely concealed anger and restraint.

_Rebellions. Inferior. Wars. Beneath us. Warriors. Can’t have a wand. Lesser Beings._

The voices abruptly voiced their opinions on them.

With that bit of knowledge, it seemed that the air they gave off was a by-product of having to deal with those that thought of them as lesser beings, things undeserving of the same politeness humans gave each other, things inferior to him.

He understood them far better than he expected, he knew what it felt like to have to serve those who wouldn’t bat an eye if you died, who thought that you were beneath them just because you were different. 

He raised his chin and tried to act like he hadn’t paused and stared, he hated it when someone did it to him and he was ashamed he did it to another.

The interior of Gringotts was even more opulent than the outside and goblin manned tellers lined the hall. It was empty of any other human though, which was good for him.

It also left him with a conundrum, he didn’t know who he had to go to in order to exchange money. Was there a special area? Did he need to say something special to them? What was the first thing he should do when he first entered Gringotts?

He pulled on the voices.

_Inheritance test. A bowl of blood. Vaults. Money. Ishouldofbeentheheir. WhydidntIinheritit? Iamrelatedtowho? Thismustbewrong._

Okay, apparently an inheritance test was important. It wouldn’t hurt, he supposed, as long as it didn’t cost too much. It would be nice to find out who he came from, and to see if they left anything for him.

He can do this. He _can_ do this. Just walk up to a teller and ask for an inheritance test. And then go through with whatever an inheritance test entailed.

He walked up to closest teller, noticing there was no name tag that he could see, and quietly said in his most polite voice, “Hello, sir, I would like to take an inheritance test.”

His voice seemed too loud for the silent room, even when he was trying to be quiet.

“10 Galleons,” the Goblin was curt and to the point.

Harry winced, embarrassed that he didn’t know this and asked, “How much would that be in pounds?”

Finally, the goblin looked up, raised an eyebrow, baring sharp teeth and said, “50 pounds.” But no comment was made about his age nor the fact he was alone.

50 pounds would use most of the money he had been saving to buy books. Which wasn’t the best in his opinion, but it might be worth it. It could turn out he had access to a vault with more money in it to use to buy books. It would also give him a chance to learn a little bit more about his family history.

It was too late to back out now, anyways. He carefully counted and placed the money on the counter.

To which the goblin said “Follow Sarnok.”

A different goblin, most likely Sarnok, gestured to him to follow and started to walk deeper into the bank, finally leading him to a door with ‘Inheritance’ written on it.

Sarnok gestured to the door and told him, “Grimfang will administer the test and explain the results.” Then Sarnok walked away.

Leaving him to face what await inside on his own.

He squared his shoulders, opened the door, and didn’t give himself enough time to panic about what he was doing.

Grimfang was an older looking goblin that sat behind a dark wooden desk who gestured for him to sit in the seat in front of it.

No greeting was exchanged before Grimfang started to speak, “Since its founding in 1474 Gringotts Bank had prided itself for its meticulous tracking of family lines and the security of its vaults.” Grimfang was giving Harry a long, calculating look as he said this. “Some family names may be dead, but their magic and titles live on in another. The inheritance test compares your blood and the magic within it to these vaults and existing vaults under your name. Vaults willed to another will not show up on the test unless you are related by blood.”

Grimfang had finally started to move, reaching into his desk, “The results of the test may also reveal lordships under your name, both future and current. It is through this test and the claiming of the name that see old lines revived.”

Harry’s attention was drawn away from Grimfang’s words as the goblin pulled out a small bowl and an obsidian knife from under the desk, setting them upon it next to a piece of parchment. How much blood is this test going to need? Hopefully not too much, he didn’t want to deal with dizziness today. Harry directed his attention back to Grimfang, who had yet to stop talking.

“In today’s world lordships just gain you a seat on the Wizengamot and, since the days of the Wizarding Council, have been titles that can only be claimed at 17. With some exceptions, of course. You will need enough blood to fill the bowl and to state your full name once filled.”

Harry breathed deeply and reached his hand up like he was going to tuck a loose curl behind his ear and gently pet Styx for reassurance. What would this reveal? Did he want to know? What if it showed nothing? What if it proved the Dursleys right, that he was nothing.

He could do this. He needed to know.

He reached his right hand for the knife, deceptively light in his hands like most things that could kill are, and rose his left hand above the small bowl and dragged the knife across the back of his hand. He didn’t want to have to deal with handling items with a bleeding palm until it clotted and healed.

Blood, red and thick, poured from his wound.

He could feel the Doorway sit up and take notice like it always did when he bled. He concentrated on pushing his powers down, on forcing them not to react to the blood that he had just spilled.

Before he knew it the bowl was filled. Harry handed the knife to Grimfang and stated, “My name is Harry James Potter.”

Grimfang pulled the bowl towards himself, starting to chant in a language Harry had never heard.

A crescendo of pressure rose in the room, his ears felt like they would pop, and Styx started to squirm. Then it crested and fell, gone as suddenly as a raven on the wind.

His blood in the bowl had turned black with silver swirls within it, never mixing but never separate, and Grimfang poured it on the parchment.

It fell thick and slow, like honey from a bottle, onto the parchment.

Then it spread like vines crawling across a wall, slowly covering it until suddenly on the now black parchment, silver words started to appear, harsh lines and curved letters.

Grimfang peered at the paper and Harry held his breath.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, Grimfang spoke, showing his teeth in what Harry thought to be a faint smile,

“Let us start with the simplest item on the list. You are Heir Potter and will be Lord of the Noble House of Potter upon your 17th birthday. Until then, you can only access the Potter Trust Vault. The Potter Trust Vault and its key is held by your magical guardian, Albus Dumbledore, at this time. The Potter Family account manager is Garfang.”

Magical guardian? Just who was that and what role did they play in his life?

And heir, lord, houses, what?

_Ward holders. Lords of the Land. Protectors. Powerful._

Harry pushed the voices down. He didn’t have the time to be distracted. He wasn’t prepared to be a wizard much less a lord. Didn’t a lordship have a bunch of fancy rules and protocols and things? Did he need to learn all of that? And who was Albus Dumbledore?

Harry quickly shoved these questions aside and refocused on Grimfang, who had a definite smile on his face this time.

“The second matter of business is more complex. An extinct line has been resurrected in yourself. Through blood and through magic, the Peverell Family has claimed you as its lord. As such, you are the owner of Vault 313, which has not been opened since 1481, under some stipulations. To claim the vault, you must claim the title Lord Peverell and all subsequent responsibilities. Questions?”

Questions.

Did he have any questions?

Harry had a lot of questions. So many that he barely knew where to start. Did he start with the titles or the contents of the vaults, or the fact he had an _account manager_?

First, Potter Family. Then, if he can’t access that without anyone knowing, think about the Peverells.

“Would it be possible for me to gain access to the Potter Trust Vault without Albus Dumbledore knowing?” asked Harry.

“No, Albus Dumbledore holds the title of your magical guardian and has the subsequent power over your vaults as you are underage. He will know that you have accessed it,” said Grimfang.

Harry grimaced, he didn’t want any attention by anyone in this world at this point, not until he had a solid understanding of this world. He wouldn’t be made a fool.

“But, you can enter Vault 313 without anyone knowing, it is yours after all. No key needed, only your magic once you enter the first time,” Grimfang said.

Right, the vault that came with the title Lord Peverell and its responsibilities.

Whatever those responsibilities were.

“What responsibilities come with accepting the vault and the title Lord Peverell?” asked Harry.

He had no interest in having all this power at his current age, but it might be helpful later. Currently, his goal was to learn about this world and explore. No more responsibilities, no more chores, no more having to live up to the expectations of another. Just freedom.

Grimfang’s smile became sharper, a gleam entered his eyes, for what Harry couldn’t tell.

“The extinction of the Ancient and Noble House of Peverell in 1481 was the reason that the Noble House of Potter gained its responsibilities and titles. As such most of the responsibilities of the Peverell family fell to the Potters giving the Potters the Peverell’s nobility and leaving almost no responsibilities to the current world for Lord Peverell. It is an old and sedentary title, a remnant of a by-gone era with its vaults untouched and unclaimed, stagnate, since the time it died out,” Grimfang glanced down at the paper, and looked back up.

“However, the Ancient and Noble House of Peverell has existed before the Wizard’s Council’s creation, back to a time when lordships and land were tied far tighter than they are today. The passing of the previous lord would have seen the heir named lord immediately, no matter their age, such as your case. The Noble House of Potter upon gaining the responsibilities of the Peverell’s decided to separate itself from the bloodier history the Peverell’s courted and refused the title Lord Peverell, allowing the house to fall into the shadows of history. As such any responsibilities the Peverell family would still have in today’s world are unknown to Gringotts, as are any properties associated with the family.”

So, no responsibilities that are known. Most likely there are none considering how old the house was. He was slightly concerned about how bloody a history it had, but in this age doesn’t everyone have a bloody family history?

“Additionally, no member of the Potter family dared claim the title Lord Peverell and welcome the rumours associated with it,” Grimfang finished.

There was silence in that room, the silence before a storm, the silence between the dying breaths of a person.

Harry deliberated with himself. A new world, but new rumours too. Was it worth it for money? Worth it to have a connection to his ancestors?

Harry was no stranger to rumours, no stranger to having his reputation decided before he even appeared, did he want to bring it upon himself again in a world he had just enter?

Yes, he would. To be able to gain access to money he sorely needed to be able to use was worth a few more unsavoury rumours about himself. Also, he had never had something, anything, to connect him to his ancestors with the exception to his last name and looks. This would give him the chance to have something more. Plus, due to its age nobody probably remembered the Peverell family anyway.

Resolute and determined, Harry made his choice and said, “I accept the title Lord Peverell and would like to go to Vault 313 please.”

A smile with a darker edge to it graced the goblin’s face, money untouched for centuries just entered the economy once more and with it a title none had dared touch since it died, and he had made it happen. The _wizards_ always deserved to panic a little in his opinion, and Peverell that was a name that would cause some panic.

“Follow Sarnok, he will take you to the carts,” said Grimfang, handing the inheritance test to the boy.

The Goblin watched the boy-lord, the _wizard’s hero_ , rise from where he sat stiffly in the seat, with his wild hair and killing curse green eyes the boy rather fit the part and the rumours that the Peverells were known for. The boy will have to take care to hide his new title, who knows what the _wizard-folk_ might do if they think he had any necromantic powers, probably kill him. After all, they killed the last one they found.

“Thank you,” said Harry, before walking to the door stiffly. His ribs had started to hurt from sitting in the same position for minutes on end and he had just noticed that the cut on the back of his hand had stopped bleeding and had been healed at some point during the conversation, but he was happy. He had a way to get money to buy books. Money completely unconnected to the Dursleys.

Plus, a title that made him feel a little more connected to his father’s family. He didn’t know them, but they had once very far back held this very title and now he held it too. The rumours probably weren’t even that bad.

There was the same goblin from before standing outside the door as he opened it. Waiting for him. No words were spoken, as the goblin gestured to him to follow.

Harry followed him down the halls, footsteps echoing around the deserted walkways, until finally he could see and hear more than just himself and Sarnok. They neared the main entrance to the bank before they turned sharply inwards away from the doors and away from the world outside.

Harry was led into what was the start of a massive underground labyrinth, a cave or mining system that stretched downwards like a massive hand ready to hollow out the Earth. The air was colder down here, and goosebumps rose on his skin as he peered into the depths of the void. He would have to enter the abyss to get to his vault, and only in a small mine cart with no safety features and manned by a goblin to get him there.

The goblin’s name Rusrok and he was to escort him down to his vault and back up in the cart. Silent and unmoving, he gave off the air that if Harry fell it from the cart and got lost in the darkness he wouldn’t care, which didn’t install a large part of confidence in Harry about his safety here.

The mine cart twisted and turned, the caverns and tunnels only barely above complete darkness as infrequent torches lined the walls. Down and down farther still, he could feel the air start to chill further, as if winter was upon them, and he could of swore they had passed a giant writhing beast cloaked in white a few turns back.

Finally, the cart came to a stop in front of dark vault doors. Unnerved, Harry stumbled after the goblin who seemed undisturbed by the crazy ride they had just taken and the thing they had just passed.

His steps echoed through the cavern as he walked up to the vault doors, there was the stillness in the air as if he was approaching a tomb instead of a vault.

The goblin stopped in front of the doors and placed his hand upon the door. A reluctant groan emerged from it as it opened, slow and languid, like a beast finally opening its maw after a long sleep.

Rusrok stayed beside the vault doors as he ventured in, a silent sentinel.

Harry would have to face what laid within by himself.

As he entered, Harry had a thought that Uncle Vernon had actually killed him a few hours ago. That this was all a fever dream or the afterlife. Styx’s movements jarred him from his frozen staring at the contents.

This was too much. Too much for an orphaned boy, who had only every worn another’s clothing, who lived underneath the stairs with the other unwanted things, whose only friend was a small bat that starved to death.

The vault was lined with weapons and jewels and chalices and every type of item in gold and silver and covered in gemstones. Remnants of someone’s life and fortune sat within it.

In the middle of the vault there was a pile of coins. Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts.

Overwhelmed and wide-eyed, Harry suddenly realized he had no idea how much anything cost or how much money he should withdrawal. He walked back out of the vault and asked Rusrok if there was any way he would be able to withdraw money without having to return to the bank. There was. For 5 Galleons he was given a bag, that, like his vault was linked to his blood and magic, allowing him to withdraw the amounts he needed when purchasing items without returning to the bank. 

Only then did he return to inside the vault and turn his attention to the portion of the room that had drawn his interest the most, that had been calling to him the moment he walked into the vault, the bookcases.

Tall and old, the shelves were filled with books on every subject.

Alchemy, potions, warding, rituals, blood magic, transfiguration, animation, healing.

There were books with titles on everything he could think of.

Paradise, in his opinion.

Then on the farthest bookcase, the only one made of oak, there were the books that looked old and fragile with names long since faded, bound in leather. These drew him in the most.

Could these hold the writings of his ancestors? Was there something amongst these shelves that he could link back to himself, further proof that he came from something more than drunk parents?

He wanted to take them all. Wanted to sit here forever until every book was finished. Wanted to engrain their writings into his mind and never forget a word. But he knew that if he started with these books he wouldn’t understand anything at all. He had to be patient.

‘Just one,’ he thought, ‘I’ll take just one, a reminder that these existed, a journal from one of my ancestors. Physical proof that I am more than what the Dursleys say I am.’

He closed his eyes, reached out his hand, and grasped a book that he felt the most drawn too. It was old with yellowing pages, bound with a soft black cord and covered in what he thought was leather, it had no title he could see, but that made it all the more interesting. Taking it off the shelf the journal was moderately sized but felt heavier in his hands than it should, as if he was holding more than just a book.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there may seem to be things one would expect in these scenes left out, like properties, how much he has, etc., there is a reason for that and it will be addressed later in the series. Currently, Harry is completely overwhelmed and things are slipping from his mind.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

_Of the books found proclaiming True Necromancy most can only be found in the worst parts of society. The same parts that sell sentient beings and their bodies, the parts that will kill them in front of you, so you get the freshest items you need. They revel in pain and death. The books found here are lies for the most part, bastardized versions of true Necromancy in others. Ha, they are so proud of these Inferi they have created. It is nothing more than simple animation, the same as making the inanimate animate. Inferi are nothing more than the bastard child of true Necromancy, the closest thing that others will ever get to grasping the eternal magic that lives inside our souls. No, you will not find what you are looking for there, and it is best not to go looking for it either or you might learn things you wish you hadn’t._

*******

The trip back to the surface from his vault was no less hair raising than the way down and he emerged from the underground caverns that held the wealth of the Wizarding World with shaking legs and determination sitting in his heart.

Gringotts may have been a tombstone to mark the riches of families and people long since passed from this world, but their life’s accomplishments and stories would be found buried amongst the stores and streets of Diagon Alley.

Now, it was time to search for them.

There were questions he needed answered and these world around him held the knowledge he sought.

He had spent enough time in Gringotts discovering his heritage and figuring out which vaults were his to open that the morning sun had risen in the sky enough for businesses to start opening. This was the time when the graveyard shift was heading home, and the early birds got up to start their day. Perfect, in his opinion, as it meant that the alley would not be overly crowded to begin with and less people to ask him questions.

But first, before started to try and find what he needed, he needed, _wanted_ , to get some food. He could finally buy something, anything, he wanted to eat, without having to worry that his Aunt would see him eating it and take it away.

He was free to try any food he wanted. Free to eat his fill. Free to, for the first time in his memory, not be hungry. 

He peered at the streets around him, trying to decide which way he wanted to go first.

“Styx, which way do you think we should go? Things are finally looking up for us and it’s time for us to explore,” he whispered, giddy with the feeling of freedom he had. He felt like he could fly without wings, like he could tame the lightning conjured by the storms, invincible.

But at the same time, it was also energy that came from being exhausted for too long.

And Harry was exhausted. Exhausted from no sleep, exhausted from the pain in his ribs, exhausted from walking for hours, exhausted from finding out he was a lord and an heir, exhausted from finding out that he was more than what the Dursleys said he was.

But there would be time for exhaustion later, when he was locked in his cupboard. There was work still to be done, and a lot of work to be started.

Styx crawled from behind his left ear to his right, he turned his head that way. It looks like that was the direction he would take today.

He gazed down it, pondering what awaited him, and started to walk.

There was a joke shop and a store for all kinds of animals, things that looked like normal cats, giant purple toads, small balls of fur that he couldn’t distinguish head from body, and- there. In the store window, bigger than Styx but still distinguishable, a bat.

A smile split his face for a second before disappearing, but with gleaming eyes, Harry exclaimed, “Styx! Styx, you can come out! They sell bats for pets here, you’ll be safe to be seen.”

With his words, Styx crawled out from under his hair and made her way down to his shoulder where she sat and gripped the fabric with her wings, still she was so small that she was barely noticeable unless one was looking for her.

He hated having to hide her, hide his friend. It felt like that by keeping her a secret he was dishonouring everything she had done for him. The fact that others here kept bats as companions regularly enough that this store had them, only made the Wizarding World all that better in his eyes.

With another quick grin, he continued to walk further down the street passing Ollivander’s, a wand shop. He paused in front of it, debating whether or not he should get a wand at the current moment, but he figured that it would be useless until he learned more.

Eventually the street turned into small stores, specialty shops and small cafés, all distinctly magical with signs that changed shape, glass items in the windows that moved, and in front of a café that demanded his attention there were flowers, dark purple with shimmering blue stripes along the petals. Every so often the flowers closed and reopened, each time a shower of rainbow sparkles fell from the center, dissipating before they hit the ground, and a tiny glowing bubble in yellows and oranges and reds floated upwards dancing between one flower and the next. 

The beautiful flowers sat in front of a small café with large open windows and only a woman behind the counter inside, the sign proclaimed it the Luminescent Café.

And he proclaimed it the place he wanted to eat food from.

As he entered the woman looked up, lilac hair, laugh lines around her eyes, and a smile on her face, she seemed friendly.

“Hello dear! Just sit anywhere after you order.”

He looked at the menu, drinks and foods he had never heard of littered the board, time to go with whatever sounds the best.

“Yes, may I have the Glimmering Apple Juice and one of the Star Muffins?”

After he had received his order, the woman must have seen his bewildered look and laughed.

She said, “The Glimmering Apple is a magical apple that sparkles purple in the night which means its juice does as well, while our Star Muffin is made with a variety of other glowing fruits and nuts found throughout the world. It is kind of the store’s main theme.”

Surprisingly, it tasted rather good (it wouldn’t be until later that he discovered that his tongue glowed in the dark, and subsequently freaked out.)

She also told him about the flowers out front when he finally got the courage up to ask.

In Britain they were called Wallflower Wisps, but in their native Americas they were called Firefly Flowers. He was in love with them and wished he could have had one to plant in Aunt Petunia’s garden.

If things like this could be found in the world he couldn’t wait to find them. So much to see, so much to learn, and he loved it.

It was after he had finally had a full stomach for the first time he could remember, and another brief conversation with the waitress, that saw him being directed down the street to a small used bookstore with the words, “Flourish and Blotts is good for the newest books but it is always so much more expensive. I prefer Ballota’s books, its smaller but cheaper.”

Harry had decided he would go to both, Ballota’s Books for things on the basic subjects he thinks he needs, and Flourish and Blotts for books he needed that are up to date.

Ballota’s Books was a small bookstore residing in a former home, it was cramped but packed to the ceiling with books of all kinds. He wandered from one room to the next, finding household charms in the kitchen which he briefly looked over, and books on magical creatures and plants in the sunroom attached to the back of the building. Here he picked up two books on the subject of plants and creatures, encyclopedias that detailed the basics.

In a room decorated like the chemistry labs at school there were books on potions and alchemy, of which he only got one on potion preparation, he had books on Alchemy in his vault and he knew the basic concept of alchemy already from his novels. In the children’s room, he picked up a copy of a book called the Tales of Beedle the Bard, it was obviously old and well-loved, and he loved it all the more for this. He grabbed a few books on charms and transfiguration as he walked past the rooms that held those.

As well as one on the Defence Against the Dark Arts, which made him suspicious on why one needed defence against it and what it was.

He also picked up a travel guide for other countries, there was a whole world out there and he wanted to know it all.

He almost didn’t want to leave Ballota’s Books, it felt like his school’s library, of the place that showed him there were more worlds than just this one.

With those books stashed securely in his backpack from school and a few Galleons lighter, he wandered towards Flourish and Blotts.

He was in no hurry here, he had all day to explore. As such, he took the time to stop into any stores that drew his attention on the way. One was full of plants, a nursery, with plants that changed colour on their own from one second to the next and others that danced and sung.

In another store there were actual mood rings that worked, and jewelry charmed to match whatever the person wore.

Styx seemed enamored with a crystal dragon that swooped from one place to another, it was so lifelike that he left questioning if it was actually alive.

This day was a good one in his opinion, he didn’t have to hide Styx nor his admiration and curiosity for the things around him.

Harry realized he was smiling, small but there, consistent, a light in his eyes that was normally non-existent.

It has been _so_ long since he had felt like this, like he actually had something to live for besides just surviving, like there was something out there waiting for him. This- this was the first steps of a long journey, the first time he was able to look up at the stars in person, the first time he finally accepted that Styx loved him. This was an incredible, magical, wonderful world finally within his grasp.

He could hear Styx’s small chirps from where she sat on his shoulder, she was happy too. Probably because she didn’t have to remain hidden and that she could feel his happiness through their bond.

Flourish and Blotts was where he bought the complete updated version of Wizarding Britain’s Laws, Modern Magical History, and the Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century. These were the things he would need to know to understand the world he was now a part of. He didn’t want to accidentally break any laws because he didn’t know them. The modern history and great events would allow him to understand what others were talking about when they discussed current events. Things every person brought up in this world should know.

It was as he was walking back to the counter to buy his books when he saw it. It froze him in his steps and stalled his brain. Harry frowned, and his brow furled as he tried to decipher what he was seeing.

There was an aisle, an entire aisle with books mentioning his name. Harry Potter and the Dragon’s Treasure. Harry Potter and the Adventure to Atlantis. Harry Potter and Defeating the _Necromancer_.

His previous good mood plummeted off the edge of the Marianas Trench, down and down, an endless spiral of confusion and questions and panic. 

What- what was this? Why did all these books have his name on them? He hadn’t done any of these things. Why- just why?

His heart stilled, and he quickly realized that if there were all these books about him, then someone was bound to recognize him, if he was famous like he suspected then he would be swarmed with people.

His breath quickened.

He didn’t like a few people surrounding him in the first place, if he was this popular he would get swamped, pulled under a tidal wave and drowned.

He had to get out of here, out of Diagon Alley as fast as he could, until he could figure out why he was famous and how it had happened.

‘Until,’ he thought, ‘I can figure out how to disguise myself.’

He didn’t want to be recognized, he didn’t want people to stare at him, to have expectations of him that he couldn’t meet, to be mobbed by people that apparently knew more about him than he did.

Get the books he has. Leave. Get back to Privet Drive.

Freak out later, escape first.

He quietly whispered to Styx, “Hide again and hold on in case I need to run.”

As she climbed back into his hair, he headed towards the counter, head down, unobtrusive, and tried not to look like he was panicking as he waited to pay for the books.

It was mid-afternoon when he had finished looking and buying books with the sun high in the sky, and clouds building on the horizon, which meant that the street was crowded and full of noise as people tried to get their shopping done for the rain started.

Previously he had been able to mostly ignore it, fleeting from one area to the next easily due to his small size, avoiding the worst of the noise and crowds.

He did not like crowds, nor loud noises, a by-product of spending most of his life isolated and alone in silence. This paired with the fact he just discovered he was apparently _famous_ , meant that he was panicking with breaths coming faster and shallower than normal as his heart rate increased.

He had to get back to the quiet and secluded cupboard under the stairs, had to get somewhere where no one would find him nor bother him, some place he could hold Styx and calm himself. As he started to move fast with eyes darting around nervously, Styx started to move around, ready to leave her hiding spot to try and calm his growing nerves.

A quiet hiss of “Stay,” halted her movements. He couldn’t risk her getting knocked off and hurt in his desperate scramble to leave.

He wove between the crowds as he headed back towards the Leaky Cauldron, head down and pace fast, he could deal with the growing pain in his ribs from his movements that jostled them if it meant he could leave all the faster.

Surprisingly, no one mentioned his fleeing or even stopped him from exiting Diagon Alley and returning to rest of London all by himself. No one even looked up. He breathed deeply as he got back into the non-magical portion of London, clutching his backpack straps tighter, he turned and headed towards the train station.

It was time to find a train and return to number 4, Privet Drive.

So, he could figure out what was happening.

*******

He spent the entire train ride back to Privet Drive in a state of half formed questions, confusion, and panic.

When he finally arrived, the sun was still in the sky, but grey clouds and a sharp wind told of a storm to come. People still milled around awake and aware, but their frequent glances at the sky told of their worries.

He quickly ducked behind the closest object as he moved as far away from people as he could. He would need to find somewhere to hide for the rest of the day until he could sneak back into number 4 without anyone noticing, a place that he could keep relatively dry if it started to rain.

He made his way to the park with a small woodland attached to it, it was dense enough and large enough that he could spend some hours hiding there without anyone finding him.

Secluded in a portion of the woods that tucked against a small overhand in the rock walls that could be found throughout the park, sitting on the hard and cold ground, with grey skies above his head and a wind howling through the trees, Harry Potter saw the first picture of his parents.

From the moment he saw the books until this second, he had been trying to grapple with the fact that he was apparently famous for reasons he couldn’t understand.

It was a hard concept to grasp for a boy who had only ever known that to his family and the world around him, he was unwanted, unlovable, non-existent, _nothing_.

To suddenly go from that to apparently being a subject of fascination to a world you knew nothing about was a hard leap to make.

He needed to understand why, how, what had happened, what was the reason behind all of this.

He dug out the two books he had gotten earlier that day about recent wizarding history and looked at them. Modern Magical History and the Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century would both probably have what he was looking for. He set aside Modern Magical History and turned to the Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century, it seemed more centered around the events that had happened more recently, and, considering his age, more likely to reference him than the other would be.

As he flipped through the pages, skimming events he planned to go back to after, he saw references to laws passed, to both of the World Wars, with _Dumbledore_ duelling a man called Grindelwald, Squib Rights Marches, Pure-blood Riots, the rise and fall of _Voldemort,_ and finally himself.

Written in ink on paper, there were pages dedicated to him.

Harry James Potter.

October 31st, 1981.

The fall of Voldemort.

The only survivor of the Killing Curse.

Cold and clinical, it told of the events of Godric’s Hollow and the fall of Voldemort unfeeling. Told about death and betrayal and shattered lives, as if the people it was writing about didn’t feel love, have dreams, didn’t have hope in their heart, and feel fear rise from within them that night. Wrote as if they were never people in the first place. Just a story to be told.

This was how he learned that James Potter and Lily Evans were not the drunks or the good-for-nothing his aunt had always told him they were.

They were heroes.

Heroes who fought for something, who died trying to save him.

People whose deaths were relegated to a small mention, like they were an afternote, an insignificant piece of information, to his survival.

Amongst the text there was a small photo of them on the page. Laughing and smiling, they were so young. Perhaps it was their graduation?

He had his father’s hair, that was true, but Harry’s was far longer than his father’s. It was the same black as the shadows of an open tomb, the same untameable quality and curls as the wind.

He had his mother’s eyes, perhaps a little brighter, but green like the new growth and new life of spring, a reminder that new things were to come.

But he didn’t have the glasses that his father wore, round and black, framing hazel eyes. Or the deep red of a rose hair his mother had. And his skin was paler than theirs, too much like he was a corpse just like they are now.

He would never know if he had his mother’s laugh, or his father’s voice. If he had their humour, or their abilities. If his favourite colour matched theirs or if they wanted to explore the world like he did.

There was so much he didn’t know and would never know about them.

And Harry, Harry was a hero for something he couldn’t even remember.

A hero for surviving when other people had died. A hero for living when his parents laid on the floor dead. A hero for killing the man who sentenced him to this life of solitude and abandonment and starvation and the cupboard under the stairs. Who sentenced him to think that his parents were not the heroic people they were, to not know the tragic and painful circumstances that cut their life so, oh so, short.

For the first time since he found out that tears did nothing to help the pain of broken bones and bruises, that tears didn’t make anything better, Harry cried.

Body shaking, shoulder heaving, sobs.

They tore from his throat, and chest, and heart, and soul. Years of agony, and sorrow, and pain, came tearing out of him. The dam that held them at bay finally collapsing under the strain, leaving devastation in its wake and drowning cities in its path.

Styx nuzzled his cheek, but that did nothing to alleviate the all-consuming sorrow that had found its way into the cracks of his bones and the spaces between his muscles, that nestled its way inside his soul and made itself at home.

For years, and years, and years, he had carried a seed of hatred for his parents in his heart for leaving him behind due to their own mistakes, a seed that blossomed the nights he sat bleeding in his cupboard, and now to find out that he hated them for a crime that his parents had never committed. That they had _died_ for him. How could he have ever hated them? How could he have ever been so ungrateful?

So, Harry cried, and cried, and cried some more, for the home he never remembered, for the people who were his parents that he had never known, for living when they died.

Harry Potter was a hero, and he had never hated himself more.


	10. Chapter 10

_The eternal magic that sits within us is usually shared by blood. Someone in your family once held it, and it matters not how far back they were nor how close to you they are. Necromancy will always provide you with more questions than answers. The things I tell you in this book is the bare bone skeleton that has been bleached by the sun, not for my lack of knowledge but for the fact that each person’s magic is unique to them. I cannot tell you how to reach inside of yourself and find your power, nor can I tell you the best way to tame it. It is unique to you and, as such, your powers are unique to you. Some Necromancers will be more suited to raising shades, to commanding spirits, to divining death, to animating corpses, to healing decay, to any of the endless fields Necromancy encompasses. To some their Necromantic abilities are limited, some will be able to raise entire armies and others will only be able to raise a mouse. Your magic is yourself, it bleeds with you, and it beats with your heart. Treat it carefully and it will answer your call._

*******

Harry felt empty when he finally finished crying. His eyes hurt, and his head ached, and he felt nothing inside of him. His eyes looked dead when he gazed at Styx, who had been trying helplessly to comfort him as he cried. He gazed at her and she gazed back.

How he wished she could speak, could tell him if what came after was peaceful, if his parents had suffered as they died. The voices never answered those questions when he asked, so he wouldn’t try now, he didn’t even truly know if he wanted the answers.

Finally, the skies above him broke and cold rain started to slowly fall, the winds had died down enough that they only rustled the trees and created a chill to run down his back. They were no longer howling like tortured souls.

It was that which broke him out of his thoughts, it was dark enough that he could make it back to number 4 without being seen and he was close enough that he could return before it really started to pour. He didn’t want to damage his new books even though he _hated_ what they had revealed to him.

As he walked back, he wondered if his parents would have loved him as he was now. Would they have loved him even if he didn’t want to be a hero? Would they have supported his desires to travel the world, to learn as much as he could? Would they hug him, and tell him they were proud of him, and accept Styx without any question?

He wanted so badly to say yes with certainty. But he couldn’t, not yet anyways, not until he could ask them himself.

Which hopeful one day he could, could find a way to summon a certain voice to speak with and get answers from.

But for now, he had to wonder.

When he reached number 4 and went inside, the house felt more like a tomb than it ever had.

Darkened hallways, silent and empty, a stillness covered the house. It seemed dead in ways it never had before he went to Diagon Alley.

There was only a small thrum of magic under his feet. It was the electric feeling of static instead of a storm. 

But with the experience of having to ignore hateful taunts and bruised skin, he ignored the feelings, cleaned his borrowed clothing and put them back where he had gotten them, before returning to his cupboard with some food they wouldn’t miss.

He relocked the door on the cupboard and sentenced himself back to his own prison.

He didn’t want to open another book on the magical world tonight, didn’t want to think about the world that had caused their deaths and his suffering. So, he tucked the books he got in the hollow alcove between the very bottom step and the floor, hidden behind his bed and under some of his clothing.

They would be safe there until he finally felt like he could open them again without having his heart ripped from his chest.

*******

It wasn’t until days after the Dursleys had returned that he finally felt like he could handle opening another book, but Harry still avoided the ones on history. He didn’t want to read about himself again.

As such, he stuck to reading the books he picked up at Ballota’s Books.

In the dark of the night, he read with his small wisp lights glowing just enough that he could see the words on the page, he was taught the basics of Charms and Transfiguration, wishing he had gotten a wand to try them out.

He sloughed through the book he got on Potions, it was interesting and seemed quite like cooking and chemistry in a way, but the writing was boring and dense.

The book on the Defence Against the Dark Arts was _thought-provoking_.

While he understood that magic could be used as a weapon and they would need to know how to defend themselves against it, he couldn’t quite grasp why something was considered a Dark Art and why something wasn’t. Anything he had been learning could hurt someone, so why were some things illegal and others not? Who decided these placements? What other things were illegal?

He could have answered these questions with the law book he had gotten, but he wasn’t in the mood to have to read through hundreds of pages trying to find the answer that would most likely be bias like all government systems were. So, he left them in his head, and moved to the next books.

The travel guides gave him a hundred more places he wanted to go and things he wanted to experience, and the magical plants were as interesting as they were strange and their uses baffling.

But the book on magical creatures was one of his favourites.

He spent night after night looking through it, whispering to Styx all about the creatures within it. Like the Ahool, a large bat like creature with wings ten feet across, which Styx took offence too when he exclaimed his admiration for it. Or the thestrals that he wondered if he could see. Or any of the hundreds of species of dragons. There were so many magical creatures and if they were like the owls in the alley, he might even be able to get up close to them. Maybe normal animals just didn’t like magical people?

The Tales of Beedle the Bard enthralled him, different times and people and stories. His favourite was the Tale of the Three Brothers, he gasped when the oldest died due to his boasting, he sympathized with the middle brother over lost loved ones and smiled when the youngest successfully hid from death. The tale was tragic and melancholy, but he found he loved it all the more because of that.

Death wasn’t something to hate or fear. It was inevitable. And as much as he wished it wasn’t, it showed him that the dead weren’t meant to come back, showing him that no matter how much he wished to bring his parents back he shouldn’t.

Death will come to them all, but he hoped that it came to him when he was old and bones stiff. When he was ready to greet death.

This is what led him to opening the history books he bought at Flourish and Blotts.

He couldn’t bring his parents back but he could learn why they died, what they were fighting for.

From this he learned the apparent importance of blood and the wars it wrought, further learning that magic could do horrible things as well as great things.

And this was how his days went.

Every spare moment of time when he knew he was safe from discovery, Harry spent his time reading his new books with Styx perched in his hair reading with him, he had large dark smudges under his eyes and was almost always exhausted from his late nights, but it was worth it.

Worth it to learn of the world his parents belonged to and died for. Learn of magic and spells and potions and learn of the bad within the good, not that it deterred him from this wonderful world of _magic_.

Wasn’t the horror that was hidden inside of it just like everything in the world?

The most beautiful of animals could produce the worst poisons, the most gorgeous scenery could hide deadly surprises.

So, it didn’t scare him much.

But still he found almost no mention of his power to bring back the dead, with the brief exception of Grindelwald’s apparent wish to make an army of Inferi, an army of walking corpses, the stereotypical undead creature in his novels.

But nothing else.

The non-magical world had more references to it than the magical one.

Finally, weeks after his trip to Diagon Alley, Harry remembered the book he had gotten from the Peverell vault. He thought he had learned enough by this point that he would be able to understand the basics of what the author talked about within it.

So, he pulled the leather bound book he had gotten from the Peverell Vault out from under the stairs and into the light.

He wondered what it held.

As he picked it up he felt the soft leather that bound it, the rough edges of the yellowing uneven pages, and a small, barely noticeable, thumping in his hands. It was so soft of a feeling that he didn’t know if he was imagining it or not, confusion marred his face as he stared at it.

It felt like the book had a heartbeat.

Putting the feeling down as either his imagination or his own heartbeat, Harry carefully unwound the soft black cord that tied it shut, and slowly opened the cover, from it a single sheet of parchment fell out, folded and looking only slightly less aged than the book.

Harry stared at the fallen piece of parchment, it looked out of place in the dim cupboard it found itself in.

Whoever had placed it in the book all those years ago had taken careful care of it. There were no rips or stains he could see on it. But it had been placed within the book after its creation, for reasons yet unknown, and forgotten about.

Which made it slightly concerning.

He placed the book aside, reached down and picked up the fallen parchment.

It was rough in his hands, with groves and edges on the back from where writing sat inside.

Opening the fragile parchment from where it had been folded, a letter came into view which read,

_Dear Henry,_

_This book is older than myself by many years. Its history has been lost to the endless sands of time. Its origins, whether it was one of our ancestors by blood or one of our kin through magic who wrote it, is unknown. Either way it is an irreplaceable gift to those like me. It is unknowable to tell you with certainty whether it should tell its secrets to you, like it did my brothers and I, or if it will keep them hidden, like it did for my son and your father. If you find that it does not reveal its writings, do not despair it has saved you immeasurable suffering and know that it does not make my love for you any less than it was. If it does reveal its writings, heed its words and share it with no one. Our family has a gift, carried down from the blood of ancestors who have been gone and dead from this world before any empires had risen. It is rare, but it does not mean that we are the only ones who have it. Nor does it mean that we won’t be punished for it, as unjust as that seems._

_Do not grow arrogant and think that it makes you unbeatable, a knife to the throat will end us as surely as any other. Do not despair and linger in the place beyond, there are limits even we cannot pass and fates we cannot change._

_My time on this Earth grows ever closer to its end. I fear that I will not be able to see you one last time before I am to go greet an old friend of mine. With your father’s passing, I leave to you all my worldly possessions, this book, and my cloak, to hide you if you ever find need for it._

_Your grandfather,_

_Ignotus_

A letter from his ancestor, not to him directly, but Henry was close enough to Harry that he could believe for a few seconds that they left it for him. That they had left him a message saying that no matter what they loved him, that they cared enough for him that they left a message designed to protect him even after their death.

Its contents were concerning though.

A family gift, rare and secret, something to be kept hidden.

Something that if he had he would be punished for, something powerful enough that one can grow arrogant from it.

And a book that held all the answers, if it revealed its contents to him.

But he sat there, under the blue glow of his wisp lights in his cupboard under the stairs as the rest of his family, the family that would rather see him dead, slept in their beds above him, ignoring everything else but the letter in his hands. He ignored the book beside him, Styx in his hair, and the concerns about what the family gift held.

He could picture a man, features indistinguishable but sharing his untameable hair, sitting by candle light writing this letter, with love enough in his heart that he would care about Harry’s well-being. That he would be proud to claim the blood that was shared between them. A man who would smile at his accomplishments and be proud of what he did. Someone who would care for him, like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia cared for Dudley.

He thought that this feeling, this letter, was the closest thing to feeling like he had a father that he could remember in all his years since James Potter had passed.

He never wanted to forget the words, these letters, how the author curved his y’s and the harsh lines he used to write his I’s, he wanted to treasure this feeling, treasure the idea and physical embodiment that a person, even though they are dead, cared for him.

He knew his father and mother cared for him, loved him, but he had nothing of theirs but his name and his looks, nothing he could hold and treasure.

It was Styx’s squeaks that drew him out of this fantasy, away from the letter he was trying to engrain in his mind, reminding him that Ignotus had mentioned the book. And family secrets. And something that could be dangerous for him.

Something he needed to look into.

Harry carefully refolded Ignotus’ letter and set it aside, so he didn’t risk accidentally ruining it.

Then he turned his attention back to the leather bound book on his bed and contemplated its contents.

What trait handed down through blood needed to be kept secret? What was so wrong with it? How was it dangerous enough that those who were born with it were punished?

He had come across no mention of any bloodline traits or family gifts that had to be punished, though he hadn’t come across any mention of bloodline traits and family gifts to begin with, in any of the books he had read.

Even when he was in the Wizarding World he hadn’t seen anything like that mentioned, with the exception of the idea of pure-bloods, half-bloods, and Muggle-borns. What even constituted a family gift? Was it like being born with green eyes or black hair?

What could it be?

He sat in his darkened cupboard, listening to the snores coming from above him as the only living family he had slept soundly, unaware of his foray into ‘freakishness’ as they would call it, reminding him that he was already being punished for being born with the family gift of magic, how could this be any worse?

But still his thoughts turned darker.

Harry clenched his hands and bit his lip as he thought, the small blue wisps of light faltered and flickered, dimming, giving off just enough light to read by, but not enough to chase away the ever darkening shadows that crept up the corners of the small room he had, giving the illusion of humanoid forms all dressed in black wearing funeral shrouds, awaiting the death of his ignorance.

He didn’t know if he wanted to figure out what the answer was. His mind conjured images of starvation and pain and punishment, every time he thought it couldn’t get any worse Uncle Vernon always surprised him.

Would this be the same?

He was already an aberration by muggle society’s standards and a monster by his family’s standards, he didn’t want to figure out that he was something more than just abnormal by wizarding standards.

Because he was abnormal to them.

Abnormal for ending a war.

Abnormal for surviving the Killing Curse.

Abnormal for killing someone before his second birthday.

He was just lucky they praised him as a hero for it instead of a monster.

Did he want to risk finding out that he was something horrible and _freakish_ even amongst the Wizarding World?

What would it reveal? Would it even reveal anything to him?

With a shuttering breath, he unclenched his hands reached out and picked up the book in his shaking hands. Its weight felt ominous now. The heartbeat from its pages menacing.

Did he want the questions he asked answered?

No.

Did he know that he would have to reveal the answers anyways?

Yes.

The spine was stiff as he reopened it, like an old casket unburied and reopened, the first page was empty.

He slumped in relief. Nothing, it would reveal _nothing_ to him.

He brought his hand down to flip the page to the next, but then a jolt, the sting of a cut, a drop of blood.

Words.

Fast and dark, words wrote themselves on the page, what once was blank became consumed with small condensed writing.

And the Doorway roared.

An avalanche of power, the unstoppable tidal wave after an earthquake rose from the sea within him, the prelude to disaster, the silence in a forest, the stillness of a grave, the emptiness of a dead body.

Styx rose and flew around his cupboard, frantic.

The book revealed its mysteries to him.

Emptiness now held words.

He had the family gift.

Now to figure out just what that was.


	11. Chapter 11

Upon the page, there were words he soon wished he had never seen.

_To those reading this book, welcome. Be proud for you have lived longer than many of our forefathers, long enough to learn how to read, and long enough to find the ramblings of a half-mad and half-dead Necromancer. Before you dismiss this work as some sort of fiction or myth, before you argue with these words and yourself, you must know that you are of a dying race, you are a Necromancer. Only one of us could read the words written within, the very words written in blood and on skin buried by my powers and re-awakened by the barest brush of yours. You are a Necromancer because this work once more comes alive in your hands and no others. I had to make it so, or if they had found it, the book would meet the same end as our kith and kin, the pyre. It is sentient to a degree as you can tell, it has to be, in order to make these writings similar to whatever language you read in your time and to make sure only you can read it, I have no wish for it to draw unnecessary attention to you or it. As this very well may be one of the only and one of the last written works detailing True Necromancy and, therefore, the Necromancers._

What kind of family gift was Necromancy?

It made an unfortunate amount of sense though. He had already assumed that the Doorway had something to do partially with the dead but had always thought of Necromancy as if it was just another branch of magic that anyone could do, not something that you had to be born with for it to work.

He would understand why it would be dangerous though, people got freaked out when it came to death and those who dealt in it. Every one of his stories had shown him that.

He turned his eyes back to the page and continued to read,

_The history told within these pages are not meant for the faint of heart, it is bloody, and it is tragic, but any Necromancer will know intimately that bloody and tragic is what our lives are doomed to be. Even if you do not continue to read these words (which I urge you to do, partly for the all-consuming terror that sits within all human minds, including mine, that we will be forgotten one day and it would be as if we never existed and suffered and lived, and partly because I hope that it may let you live longer than many of us ever do) take this one piece of warning or knowledge with you, they will kill you just because you are a Necromancer, so tell no one and practice only when you know no one is watching. By some curse and some blessing, you have been born a Necromancer and, as such, born to solitude and suffering. Our art is clandestine, and we are arcane._

Killed? What?

He had thought that dangerous and punishment meant that people would just avoid him, creeped out by his powers, not that they would actually try and kill him for it.

Now he understood the reference to the pyre in the first paragraph. But who calls Necromancy a gift when others had been burned for it?

What kind of present was something that dooms you to a life called ‘bloody and tragic,’ in which the first page hopes you live longer than most do?

And solitude and suffering? Ha. Hadn’t he had enough of those for his lifetime?

But it made a wretched amount of sense now that he thought about it.

It was why he was so cursed to this life of pain, why everyone avoided him.

He was a Necromancer.

He wondered if never finding out about his powers would have been better than this. To be living a life only knowing the Dursleys, knowing nothing magical.

Was being a Necromancer and all that it entails worth having access to his magic and having the ability to have Styx in his life?

Yes.

But would others think the same? Would his parents have thought the same?

He had no idea.

He needed to know what the Wizarding World thought about Necromancy, what kind of belief the society and his parents would have held about it. Would hold currently. Before he could know those answers.

But he would overcome the additional challenges a Necromancer came with, rise to the occasion, like he had with ever thing else in his life. 

He just- he just needed to figure what that meant for him in Britain during this time period, because this book was ancient, and they burned witches a few hundred years back as well.

Maybe things have changed.

He closed the book, resolute, and placed it on his bed. Calling Styx down from her place hanging from the ceiling to land on his head again. He started to dig out his book on the laws of Magical Britain.

It had been the only one he hadn’t even started to read, yet. It was too complex, too thick, too much about things he had no idea about when he had first opened it, so he had set it aside for another day. Tonight was that day.

And now he had to try and find anything within it about Necromancy. So, he knew what he had to face when entering that world.

But he had faith in his abilities, he would survive. He would survive like he always had.

*******

It had taken him endless nights, feeling as if he had made no progress in the book, page after page of things he didn’t know and rules he didn’t understand, before he had found the first mention of Necromancy.

He had passed pages detailing laws of Centaurs, Merpeople, Werewolves, Veela, and Vampires. Hundreds of beings, their lives restrained and movement restricted, before he had seen Necromancy mentioned.

The terms using to describe a Necromancer were vague, referring to any who rose a dead body and practiced _Necromancy_. But the term Necromancy was never defined. What it meant to the people of the Wizarding World was beyond his knowledge, but what they associated with it wasn’t.

Necromancy had been lumped in with Black Magic. Another term he didn’t understand, why was Black Magic and the Dark Arts so bad? What made them so feared? What made everyone so against it?

Grindelwald’s Inferi also fell under the category of Necromancy, the only specified term and practice actually associated with it in the law books. Either those who created these laws didn’t know what Necromancy entailed or thought they would never have to use the laws in the first place.

The most concerning aspect was that after all these years the punishment had never been changed.

The laws placed practitioners under immediate death clauses, to be thrown through the Veil of Death or kissed by a Dementor. Harry didn’t know what either of those things were, but he knew that neither of those options sounded good to him.

He sat in silence and laid solemn eyes on Styx.

Wasn’t he already a practitioner sentenced to death?

According to all these laws, to the belief of Magical Britain, he didn’t deserve to live, he was talked about as nothing more than a monster for being born with powers he had no control over.

They talk about it as if Necromancers had been born evil, born with a sickness whose only cure was death, something in which it was mercy to be put down instead of live.

Was he really that bad?

Was there actually a thing in him, something that twisted him up inside, something that already assigned him and set him on a course in his life where he was bound to turn evil?

Did he actually deserve what the Dursleys were doing to him?

Did he deserve the starvation, and bruises, and broken bones, and the pain that made him feel like he would just rather die?

Did he deserve the isolation, the solitude, the loneliness? The feeling that he was already dead just waiting for his body to catch up to his mind.

Were the Dursleys’ right? Was he actually a freak? Something that should have died with his parents?

According to the laws and the Wizarding World he was.

He was nothing more than a monster. A mistake that should have never been born.

Did his parents know?

Did they not care, and love him anyways?

Did they ignore the laws that told them he was a monster and decided that he was perfect for them just the way he was?

Did they still decide to fight and save him in spite of this?

Did they know?

If they didn’t, would they have stilled died for him?

Or would they have decided that his death was just and stood to the side?

Would they have killed him before Voldemort had even come after him?

Were these powers the reason Voldemort came after them in the first place?

Was it his fault his parents were dead?

These questions and thoughts swirled around his head. Chilling him to the bone, he wanted to reach inside of himself and rip the Doorway, what made him a Necromancer, out of himself. He wanted to rip and tear and destroy until there was nothing there but an empty void like the space in his heart his parents should have filled.

But he couldn’t.

As much as he hated it, as much as he _despised_ himself, he was too selfish to do it.

Or perhaps too much of a coward.

How could he be evil, how could he been destined to die for these powers, when they created something like Styx?

Styx had only ever been his friend, had loved him, had nuzzled him, had dragged him out of his spiralling thoughts, and distracted him from the constant crush of people outside in the world. She had shown him what it meant to fly, what it meant to be free from the limitations of this earth bound existence. She never left him, never attacked another. She let him pet her, hold her, she was the only thing in the world that reminded him that love actually existed.

If it was evil to want something to love him so bad that he had to create it, then was it himself that was evil or was it the world that proclaimed it so?

He could bring the dead back to life, but magic could do so much worse.

Why, due to some random luck of blood, was he deemed a monster?

Why was it him who was supposed to die, why not them?

Confronted with the reminder of his own mortality, that one day he was destined to die and nothing he could do would stop it, that the world he was a part of would see him dead in his cradle, his cupboard suddenly reminded him of a grave, silent and empty and forgotten.

He didn’t fear death, but he wasn’t ready to die.

He didn’t want to die young.

The shadows, dark and endless, were the hands of Death reaching out to drag him to the afterlife.

He _wasn’t_ ready to greet death.

He didn’t _want_ to die young.

He may not be afraid of what comes after, but he- but he hadn’t _lived_ yet.

His magical light flickered and went out.

The darkness suffocated him, surrounding him on all sides, whispering that he wouldn’t be in this world for long. That his death was upon him.

“I’m not ready to die,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to die, Styx. I haven’t lived,” he said again, voice breaking.

“I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t deserve to die this young. I promise.”

He didn’t know who he was promising, whether it was himself or every god that had once been worshipped on this Earth, but he said it like a plea and a prayer and the last words of a dying man before drawing his last breath.

He plead to this unseen deity, breathlessly, as if he didn’t have enough time to breathe and get all his words out before his succumbed to his own mortality.

“I have plans. I want to see waterfalls, and the mountains, and the stars in the country. I want to swim in the ocean, and walk through fields of flowers, and experience rainfall in the jungle. I want to feel the heat of the sun on my skin, and see the clouds in the sky, and watch Styx flying. I want to find friends and have a family. I want to _live_. Please, please, let me live a little before I have to die.”

It was then, in the darkened room of his childhood, with all the unwanted objects, that Harry Potter discovered that he wanted to do more than just survive. He wanted to live.

He just had to figure out how.

How to survive in a world that wanted him dead, who would vilify him for the powers he was born with.

He needed to survive until he was old enough to leave, to travel, to explore, to live.

To do so he needed to learn everything he could about his magic and his Necromancy.

He couldn’t be caught off guard, and until he figured everything out about his Necromancy and had it fully under control, he could not let anyone near him.

It was too much of a risk.

He could handle a few more years of solitude and loneliness, if it meant he lived to see the world beyond these walls.

As long as he had Styx he would be fine.

He _had_ to be fine.

He breathed deeply, calmed his racing heart, and cradled Styx in his hands.

It would be fine. He would be fine. He would survive this like he survived everything in his life so far.

He would pick his battles and calculate the costs of each move.

He could do this.

It was just like when he first tried to control his magic.

He just needed to try and try again, until it worked, but this time he actually had a book to guide him.

He closed his eyes in the darkness.

One, inhale. Two, exhale. Reach for the star, pull, and _let there be light_.

He opened his eyes and around him floated dozens of small lights. Flickering like a flame and dancing to a music only they could hear. There were a dozen different colors and a dozen different dances.

A galaxy in his cupboard under the stairs.

If he could figure out how to do this by himself, he could figure out how to be a Necromancer by himself with only a book for help.

As Styx danced around the lights, looking like something far more magical than the ordinary bat she was born as, he turned back to the book on his bed.

He needed to read it and read it all. Multiple times in fact.

He needed to know what to expect, needed to know how to control his powers. If he couldn’t then everything would be lost. He had to learn everything he could.

Then, and only then, would he try to figure out how to be a hero in a world that wanted him dead for being born.


	12. Chapter 12

_The first steps a Necromancer needs to take to learn how to control their powers is to use it by raising something. Your first raising should be done with something very small, a mouse, rat, songbird, whatever is chosen should be small. The larger something is the more power is needed to resurrect it. Secondly, these creatures should be simple, do not choose to resurrect a child as your first, the more intelligent and sentient the being, the harder it is to control it. When you raise something, you are making it a short-lived extension to your being, you must be able to overwhelm the being’s will with your own and make it do what you wish. Third, the creature you choose to raise needs to be intact and preserved, the more lifelike it is the easier it is to raise, your powers won’t have to compensate for the missing parts._

*******

Since the day Harry had figured out what being a Necromancer entailed, he had been jumpy and paranoid. He refused to head back to Diagon Alley until he knew he could control his powers. He carried this illogical fear that someone would suddenly figure out what he was just because Harry himself now knew it.

He knew his aunt was suspicious of his new found wariness if her calculating glares meant anything.

It didn’t help that he was exhausted, he had spent his nights hidden in his cupboard reading the book from front to back, twice, so he wouldn’t miss anything. This meant that he was getting barely an hour or two of sleep a night and left him jumping at the shadows that moved in the corners of his eyes. He knew he was getting paler and the bags under his eyes darker, and that a perpetual headache pounded like a noose around his head, but he had to do this.

It was also so much harder for him not to snap at his family, not to just give in and raise something, bloody and torn apart and obviously dead, to scare them into submission. Hard not to give in and use his magic to light them on fire, to see them burn, to feel the pain he felt. Hard not to say something he would regret.

This led to constant struggle with his Necromancy and magic, both of which wanted to be used when he got emotional.

He knew it was a side effect of his exhaustion, but it didn’t make it any easier to control.

He also knew he had to start getting sleep again, and soon, before something went wrong. But he could only do that if he could show himself that he had actually learned something about controlling his powers from the book first.

This lead him to wanting to try and raise another creature _without_ making it permanent this time.

But with all his chores and school, it was hard to find time to even go looking for dead things that met the criteria listed out in the book.

He had thought about waiting around Mrs. Figg’s house to see if her cats brought her any of their kills and left them on the doorstep for him to go and get. But even he could acknowledge that it was infeasible plan and had an exorbitant amount of risk.

The lack of sleep definitely hadn’t help with him trying to plan and figure out a solution to his problem of finding a body.

So, he turned to his first plan from finding Styx, looking around the wooded park when he had the time. He looked around the overhang, in holes, and under bushes. He had plenty of scratches from digging through the plants and had spent days with the irritating feeling of burning from the times he got caught on Stinging Nettle.

He was perpetually covered in dirt from trying to find something dead, which his aunt disliked to the extreme, something about him dirtying her house as if he wasn’t the one who did all the cleaning and often showed him her displeasure by forcing him to do more choirs with even less food than usual. But if he could just _find_ a dead body everything would be fine.

But, just like the first time, nothing.

He had found pieces of bones, but nothing intact nor freshly dead.

And that was what he had been trying to do today, yet it still ended in failure. There was nothing dead in the woods, or on the ground, or in the trees. Nothing.

He sat down on the nearest bench, covered in dirt and mud, and rubbed his burning eyes with the cleanest area of his hands.

Keeping his head in his hands he tried to think of where one could go to find something dead.

The graveyard was out, as was the hospital, both only dealt with humans. The veterinarian’s office might have something, but it would mean sneaking in and out with its body. And technically, stealing a body, now that he thought of it.

Where did all the Necromancers in his stories find their bodies? Was there like a Tesco for dead things? Or were there just bodies lying around everywhere?

He sat there for quite a while, head in his hands, trying to get his sluggish brain to _think_ , when Styx’s moving finally gave him an idea.

When he had first seen her, he thought she was a mouse, until the wings. In his book about bats there was something about the Mexican free-tailed bat. Something about mice. Something that he knew if he remembered would solve all his problems.

He rubbed his face and looked at the growing shadows from the trees, Dudley would be wanting to head home soon which means his time to think was almost up.

He knew there was something he was missing, something about the Mexican free-tailed bat and caves? What was it?

It wasn’t until he was in his cupboard later that night, shoulder aching from where his uncle pulled it after seeing him dirty, that he remembered.

“Snakes!” He exclaimed.

The Mexican free-tailed bat had a fun-fact written with it in the book he read, a side note to the Cave of the Hanging Snakes in Kantemo, Mexico where the Yellow-Red Rat Snake hung from the ceilings of the cave and ate bats as they flew past.

People kept snakes as pets and they had to feed them something. And where did people buy mice for them? The pet stores. He could walk right in and buy preserved dead mice like he was going to feed them to his imaginary pet snake.

How could he forget this? It would solve all his problems in acquiring small creatures to practice on.

Harry finally relaxed some, he had money left over from his trip to Diagon Alley that he had never needed to use on books since accepting the Peverell Vault. He could use it for this.

He just needed to find a time he could sneak away and acquire some mice to practice on.

*******

Harry knew that the Dursleys were heading to a fancy dinner and Dudley was having a sleepover at Piers house tonight. And after the last incident of his magic acting up, they had decided they couldn’t risk leaving him with Mrs. Figg and having him do something _freaky_.

This meant that he was to be locked in his cupboard once more.

Not that he minded, it would serve his purpose perfectly.

Once more, Styx sat outside ready to alert him when they had left.

He yawned and waited in his cupboard, silently.

Then Styx tugged the bond between them.

Harry sluggishly got off his cot, he wanted to sleep so bad, but he couldn’t yet.

He used his magic to open his cupboard, didn’t bother to change his outfit due to the lack of time, and walked to the front door.

He waited again for a tug from Styx to tell him that no one was nearby and, therefore, he was safe to make a break for it.

It took a good thirty minutes for Styx to pull on the line again, and for him to dash out of the house and run as fast as he could to the wooded area nearby.

He slowed down as he approached the woods, coming to a stop within it to catch his breath. Styx flew down and landed in her usual spot as he did.

As soon as he wasn’t panting for air, Harry started walking towards the closest pet store, his pace was brisk as to lessen the chance of being seen. He wanted to get in, get the mice, and get out as fast as possible.

He kept his eyes peeled and attention on his surrounding as he walked, he did not want word getting back to Aunt Petunia about his adventures. And with the amount of gossip this neighbourhood shared, if anyone saw him it _would_ get back to her.

The pet store came into view in front of him and he quickened his pace, anticipation filling his body.

As he walked in his eyes automatically darted to the glass cages that lined the wall in the back, he wondered if he would be able to understand these snakes as he had the one in the Zoo Incident.

He winced in remembrance.

It had happened near the beginning of his self-imposed insomnia. He had been brought to the Zoo with Dudley reluctantly, as Aunt Petunia didn’t like leaving him unattended in the house alone.

It had happened in the reptile exhibit, Harry had found that he could understand snakes and that due to this ‘Speaker’ status, snakes were not as afraid of him as the other animals he had met, which made the visit all the more enjoyable.

Of course, when he had been pushed to the ground by Dudley and one of his very few conversations with something that actually liked him was interrupted, his anger rose within him and his magic flared. Before he could stop it, the glass keeping the snake inside disappeared, which let the snake out but pushed Dudley in, before it reappeared effectively trapping his cousin in a cage.

Once they had gotten to number 4 that night, Uncle Vernon had started to surpass volcanic anger and set into an icy rage. He didn’t remember much of that night, just sharp pain and waking up covered in blood and bruises, questioning how he had survived.

He thinks that the only reason he survived was his magic was focused on keeping him alive instead of lashing out at his uncle.

Still, he’d rather not risk another incident or its consequences, so he would avoid the snakes.

Instead Harry, trying to look like he did this every day, walked up to the attendant and asked for some frozen mice to feed his pet snake at home, rather than going to find them himself.

No questions were asked, the price was rather cheap, and now Harry had 4 dead frozen mice in a box resting in his hands.

As he exited the building he tucked them carefully in his pocket, wincing at the chill and started his trek back to number 4.

He had yet to decide where he would hide the mice and where he would practice, nor had he examined them to see their condition.

When he reached the woods, he pulled the mice from his pocket. They had melted some from the walk but still refused to yield any motion. Ignoring that they looked like they could be alive.

‘Perfect,’ he thought, ‘to practice on. I will be able to raise them and finally feel like I am doing something to solve my problems. Maybe I’ll finally get some sleep tomorrow.’

Harry knew he had to raise them tonight, or else there was a high risk of them being found by his relatives or of them starting to decompose.

He had decided that the best place to practice would be the back garden at night. With high fences and shrubs, it would conceal him and his experiments in its shadows.

Plus, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always returned home after one of their fancy dinners tipsy and slept like the dead that night. And with Dudley out of the house, this was the best chance he would get to practice.

Most likely they wouldn’t even open his cupboard when they returned home that night. They would forget all about him, giving him a greater leeway to keep the mice hidden.

Harry tucked the mice back into his pocket and shook his hands trying to get the melted ice crystals to dislodge from them.

He turned back towards number 4, and told Styx, “Just like this morning, a tug if the coast is clear for me to return.”

Styx launched herself off of him and went flying into the sky. Harry leaned against a tree, eyes darting back and forth, watching and waiting. Impatient to return back and safely tuck away his supplies.

Styx tugged almost immediately, and Harry shoved his hand in his pocket to keep ahold of the mice and started to run.

He returned to number 4 feeling accomplished and settled himself on his cot to reread the book on magical creatures as he waited for his aunt and uncle to return, and to keep himself awake.

Tonight was the night he would raise something again.


	13. Chapter 13

_After you have the creature you wish to raise, find a secluded area and time. In the beginning, raising something is a practice in patience. You are conduit for your magic, like wands are for Wizarding Folk. Holding the creature or having physical contact with it makes the process easier. You are to pull the smallest amount of power from yourself as possible, the smaller the better, and connect it with the creature. Then you must wait, until you have control over your magic you do not force it to be raised. This connection between you and it is a small steam of water from the ocean, the creature is the basin to be filled drop by drop. Eventually, it will be filled, and the power will overflow from its body allowing it to be raised. As soon as it starts moving and breathing again you must cut the connection. To cut the connection you must pull another, larger, stream of power and cross it with the connection. This will disrupt the it and wash it away. The larger the connection the more power is being used, the larger the connection the hard it is to cut it. The longer a creature is raised the more power it demands, and as such the connection grows until eventually it can no longer be cut. Doing this often will help you both grow and control your powers._

*******

His uncle’s snores rang through the house that night, as loud and clear as bells from a church at midnight.

Harry laid in his cupboard, for the first time in a while with no new bruises marring his flesh, like he predicted they hadn’t even opened his cupboard when they returned home, instead they went right upstairs to fall into their bed and go to sleep.

But the mice in his pocket had long since thawed and grown malleable.

The darkness was silent as he unlocked and opened his cupboard, the only sound that broke it was the snores from his uncle. He kept his footsteps light and silent as he crept towards the backdoor. He felt like a thief.

Styx flew silently though the air as he crept forward, his path lit only by the moon outside. He couldn’t risk creating one of his lights just in case someone saw it.

He reached for the lock on the backdoor and turned it, a quiet click punctuated the still air. Harry turned the doorknob and pulled the door open, it creaked quietly, unnoticeable the noise would have been in the pandemonium of day but deafening in the hush of the night.

As Styx flew out the door and up into the night sky, Harry tread carefully as he exited the house, it wouldn’t do to accidentally step on a stick and cause noise. Finally, he closed the door behind him, closed his eyes, and sighed in relief.

When he opened them again, he could scarcely believe that this was the back garden he had spent so many backbreaking days in during his youth.

It was bathed in a soft white glow, illuminated even in the dead of night. He could see every detail on every plant from where he stood, but their harsh edges had been dulled and they seemed softer somehow. Colours had taken on a misty appearance, dulled under the light of the moon, colder tones had been pulled to the forefront of each plant.

The air was cold but still. Silent. Waiting for something.

Harry breathed in and the cold air felt fresh in his lungs, as he exhaled slowly the air misted slightly.

He turned his eyes up towards the sky, the stars were barely visible, hidden both by the brightness of the moon and the thin clouds that dotted the air above him.

The moon was large and bright in the sky. It glowed softer than the sun but just as vivid. It sat there silent and watchful, observing and judging every action done under its light. It was a ghost in the darkened sky.

The clouds were small and grey, with just enough of a presence to dim the moon’s light slightly as they continued on their trek through the night.

He felt small standing there in the garden, felt like an intruder in a realm not his own.

Harry tore his eyes away from the moon and walked towards the small corner of the garden hidden between the fence and the house. As he walked he felt the dew on the grass wet his feet, felt the cold ground under him, but he ignored this as he sat with crossed legs and pulled out the mice.

He carefully laid the rest on the ground and picked up the smallest of the group, it was barely bigger than Styx. He glanced upwards, eyes immediately finding her as she did twirls and dives in the air, then looked back at the small white mouse in his hands.

He closed his eyes and reached for that primordial jungle, that ancient ocean, the blizzards of the last ice age, and there they sat. As endless and as terrifying as they were when he first touched them.

This was the realm of the dead.

The realm that no mortal, no living being, belonged to.

This was the unfathomable, the endless, the incomprehensible realm, which saw the creation of worlds and the end of gods.

And yet he dared touch it, dared wander through its halls and forests, brave its oceans and winters, dared call upon its knowledge to sate his curiosity, and dared to steal its occupants from it.

He slowly reached forward and tugged a small line from it, as thin as a spider’s web but just as strong. He pulled, directing it through his soul, and bones, and flesh, and skin, until it reached the mouse in his hands.

“Patience must be practiced,” he whispered as he opened his eyes.

Nothing had been changed in the garden nor the sky, but he felt as if something had.

There was a feeling, like music swelling to a crescendo, like the silence in a forest just before a predator pounced, like the air before a storm hit with all the fury of forgotten gods wishing to remind the world that they still breathed.

Harry sat there under the moon’s silent glow in the still air with stiff legs and cold skin. He sat there and waited. Waited like he was watching to see if he would get to eat that day, like he needed to see if he had to brace himself from a blow coming his way. Waited like he had when he was younger, silent and still in his cupboard, for his parents to reappear and save him. Waited like he still knew what hope felt like.

Finally, an immeasurable amount of time later, the mouse’s body started to move. Its chest rose and fell like the sun and moon in the sky. Its paws twitched, and tail swung this way and back again.

Suddenly, it was alive once more.

Alive and breathing and here.

Harry breathed in time with it, his hands instinctively tried to twitch close, he gazed at it and contemplated the fleeting existence of life.

He wondered what its life was like before this moment. Did it suffer, or had it had a good life? How long had it been alive before it had been killed for food? Did it even know the difference for being dead and alive? Was there a difference?

He didn’t dare contemplate this for long. He had to put it back to rest.

Harry followed the connection back to his powers and plucked another string from it. It was fast and large, the rapids and rivers that carved canyons, and he pushed it towards and through the connection with the mouse.

Like writing in the sand at a beach, like petal in a stream, like blood off of skin, the connection was washed away in the river of power that flowed over it.

And, as suddenly as it was alive once more, it laid in his hands dead.

Dead and gone.

Like a candle in the wind.

Fleeting.

Temporary.

Ephemeral.

Was that life? Short and flickering? So easy to be washed away as if it never existed?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t think he would ever know.

Harry stared at the mouse in his hands. Its white fur glowed in the moonlight. It grew cold in the night air once more.

Harry carefully set it on the ground and dug a small hole in the garden, as if he was about to plant a new flower, it was small and dark and cold and damp. He lifted the mouse and reburied it in the soil.

It would be the first in this graveyard of creatures.

Harry carefully laid the other three mice in another hole in the ground, he wished he could keep them in the freezer, so he could practice again with them later, but he couldn’t. He would have to content himself with the odd times he could go out and buy more mice or find a freshly dead creature to use.

Sometime during these events Styx had landed on a branch next to him, gazing at him with solemn eyes. Did she fear that he would one day do that to her? He didn’t think he could ever do it, to erase her existence, to bury her in the cold ground to be forgotten.

He smiled softly at her, small and sorrowful, as he raised a hand to pet her fur. He was greedy and selfish, he couldn’t handle having to part from her and would continue to defy death to keep her with him.

Harry rose to his feet with her in his hands, clutched closely as if he could protect her for eternity from the grasping hands of death.

He reentered the house as silent as a ghost. Relocked the door behind him and the cupboard as well. And laid himself upon his cot and stared into the darkness. It had worked, and once again nothing bad had come from breaching the wall between here and there. He could finally rest.

*******

Harry’s life had a routine after that. He would do his chores, go to school, and every few weeks find a time to sneak off to the pet store to buy some mice.

He had yet to gain the courage or the time to see the snakes and see if they would speak to him as well, but he didn’t mind that much. It seemed like such a small problem compared to everything else.

His control over his Necromancy had been growing, it took him a matter of minutes to raise a mouse now, but he had yet to try on anything bigger. Though he knew he would have to soon, with less time meant less power being used, as such, like a pup growing into a hunting dog, his powers grew hungrier to be used.

But just because he knew his powers were coming under his control easier, didn’t mean he didn’t make stupid and simple mistakes.

He had been cooking dinner for his family this night, the day had been going pretty well up until then, he had even been given a sandwich for lunch, even though it was just bread and butter. The day was good.

Then, just because the food was taking a little longer than normal to cook and wasn’t on the table when it was supposed to be, his aunt said, in that hateful, spiteful, acidic tone of hers, “You’re just as useless as your parents!”

Such a simple, stupid comment, something that hadn’t truly bothered him in years, and all his hard work failed him.

A bolt of rage shot up his spine, his teeth clenched, his eyes narrowed, but he held his tongue.

He thought he had it under control, thought he wouldn’t lose control, but then the pan on the stove burst into flames.

He should have been past making these mistakes.

He should have this under control.

Fear replaced anger.

He wanted to run, wanted to hide, but the only thing he could do was put out the fire and brace for the blows he knew was to come.

Surprisingly, the punishment this time wasn’t as bad for some of his other indiscretions, perhaps because his uncle had a different idea. 

“So, boy, you think it would have been a grand idea to try and burn down _my_ house, didn’t you?” His Uncle had asked in a low voice, filled with the same tone he usually adopted when he had gotten another cruel idea for punishment in his head. “Well, we’ll see how much you like living without a roof over your head.”

Harry was then dragged to the back door and thrown out it with bruises blossoming on his skin.

“You’ll stay here for the night, and if I even see evidence of you leaving this backyard, I’ll make sure you don’t see the outside of your cupboard for a month!”

Then, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut and locked it.

Harry rubbed his right wrist from where he had landed on it, it didn’t seem broken, but pain flared from his old injuries. He slowly maneuvered his body until he was standing and brushed off the frost from his clothing. It was the end of fall and the beginning of winter soon, so frost had begun to cover the ground as soon as the sun set in early evening.

Harry sighed and trudged over to the corner he usually practiced his Necromancy in. It would provide the most cover from the wind until he could sneak back into the house once they went to sleep.

He sat there trying to calm his racing heart. He had been trying so hard not to let his magic respond to his emotions, not to let their comments affect him, and he had failed.

It had been going so well, but one simple comment, not even the worst he had heard, and it all fell down like a cliff into the sea.

He closed his eyes, kept his wrist tucked to his chest, and tried to see if he could catch some sleep as he waited. Styx would wake him as soon as the coast was clear for him to reenter. After all, even the Dursleys knew that bruises on his face would draw attention as he got older which meant that she was safe from harm usually.

That’s when he figured out he messed up even worse than he thought.

He heard a rustle in the dead leaves near him, as quiet as a whisper in the wind but still there. Harry opened his eyes and turned to look at his graveyard of experiments.

Dirt had been pushed up and out of one of the graves.

Something had clawed itself free from its confines.

Eyes wide, Harry quickly crawled towards the graves, ignoring the pain in his wrist and the cold on his hands, as he tried to find what had been risen.

He reached inside and found the new connection he had inadvertently built, following it like a piece of string into the shadows of a bush.

There.

The half decomposed bodies of one of the mice he had bought shifted around in the dirt. Dragging itself further into the shadows, ignoring that its lower back half had been left behind as it had crawled from its resting place.

Harry quickly drew on his power, preparing to break the connection.

Its head had turned to look at him, revealing the skull that the skin had sloughed off of.

He broke the connection.

It fell back down, dead.

He grimaced, and reburied it with some dirt, if it was discovered Aunt Petunia would just think a cat did it. 

He had made a larger mistake than he had initially realized.

Raising mice had come so easily now that he could do it subconsciously, barely any power was needed.

He needed to find something bigger to work on.

Rats. From the same place he bought the mice.

Bigger and needing more power, but harder to hide.

Worth the risk though. He needed to use enough of his powers, so that he could exhausted it and not lose control.

He also needed to either learn to keep his emotions in check or to use up enough magic that it would be similarly enough exhausted.

Harry sat back, rubbed his face, and groaned. Just when he thought things were getting better.

*******

These slips of control weren’t the only problems he learned came with raising something.

Harry had returned to his history books that night, deciding that it was too cold for him to practice raising one of the rats he had gotten a few days ago from the pet store and to try and decipher the meaning behind the previous Wizarding War.

Only to remember and re-read that the most commonly accepted reason was blood.

Blood.

As if blood was some noble cause.

As if blood was worth more than the fact that it ran through your veins and stained the ground red. As if it didn’t just mean you failed to dodge a blow or failed to avoid injury. How much can it matter in terms of bonds when his blood family were both as willing to die for him and as willing to kill him in equal measures?

Blood means nothing.

To find out the reason his parents had died because they fought on the opposite side of someone obsessed with blood infuriated him. What noble cause was that? Their deaths were discussed as statistics in a meaningless war.

As anger thrummed through his veins to the beat of his heart, the Doorway roared in response.

Heightened and restless, the ocean’s waves rose higher and higher like it was challenging the storm clouds above it, the blizzard’s howls increase as the wind became biting and sharp.

Looks like he was going to have to raise something tonight after all.

It was far past his normal time of sneaking out of the house to practice, when he emerged from his cupboard.

The snow laid silent and undisturbed outside the window. The moon the barest sliver of light in the sky.

Thankfully the paths in the back garden had been carefully shoveled so no one would notice his footprints on the ground.

As Harry emerged from the house, goosebumps immediately rose on his skin, he shivered, and his breath misted in front of his face, as he walked towards his corner.

Already chilled to the bone and fingers stiff in the short walk it had taken him, he moved aside the snow and soil covering the preserved bodies of his experiments rougher than usual.

He wanted this to be over and done with. Wanted to get back inside where it was slightly warmer. Wanted the reason for the war that his parents died for not to have been blood.

Harry reached inside of himself, plucked a line as thin as a human’s hair, and directed it towards the grey rat in his hands. It was plump and heavy, larger than his hand and then some.

Harry shook and shivered, waiting and waiting, anger still coursing through his veins, thoughts wandering to what he had read about the war.

His thoughts wandered enough that he missed it when the rat started to breath and wake again.

He didn’t notice until the sharp hot pain punctuated his mind as the rat sunk its teeth into his thumb.

Automatically, Harry released his hold on the rat, flinging it just a small amount away from him.

It landed with a thud on the ground, but instead of going after Harry again, it turned on itself.

Curled into a ball, the rat scratched and started to bite itself. Like it couldn’t feel pain, it turned this way and that, ripping out chunks of fur and flesh without thought. The silence of the night was pierced by the wet, tearing sounds of muscle being separated and the small snaps of bones breaking under teeth.

Harry felt like he was going to vomit as he watched, with large eyes and skin paling, the rat systematically tear itself apart.

No matter how much it tore off, how many bones it broke, how much blood now stained the white snow red, the rat didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

He sat silent and still, unable to think, unable to move, as he watched the violence unfold in front of himself.

It took Styx swooping into his face and squeaking to break his unwilling concentration on what was occurring. To stir himself from the statue like phase he had fallen into.

He pulled as much power as he could from the Doorway as quickly and as fast as possible and pushed to break the connection.

It broke but there wasn’t barely any rat left to bury.

Just a red and white mound of flesh and bones.

Indecipherable to tell what it even was.

With shaking hands Harry pushed his hair back from his face, what had that been?

That was unshakable violence, malice in its purest form. It was hunger and starvation. Desperation and death.

It was death.

For so long, resurrection had been peaceful, silent, still. He had been lured into a false sense of security, into a mind frame that death was always peaceful.

That death was falling asleep in your bed after a long life.

Of slipping away silently after a life well lived and full of laughter.

Of peace and tranquility.

Of stillness.

He had forgotten that death was bleeding out on a battlefield.

Of being trapped and failing to claw yourself to freedom.

Of bargaining and life cut far too short.

Of anger and agony.

Of destruction.

What was death but the great equalizer? The thing that made two opposites the same, of unimaginable cruelty and unfathomable mercy.

Harry sat there staring at the snow stained red, and slowly rose.

He felt cold. Not the cold that comes with winter, but the cold that came with hearing someone you know has died.

He had forgotten just how terrifying that power within him was.

The blood and body would be blamed on a cat. It was too big a puddle of red, too violently of a torn apart body for him to be able to bury.

Harry walked silently back to the house, Styx flying above him, with silent steps.

Just before he opened the door he caught a glimpse of himself in the window.

The moon gave off just enough light for him to see his reflection.

He wondered what others thought of him as they saw him.

Did they see hair the colour of raven’s wings framing his face and falling to his jaw in curls and waves that defied taming. See bones too sharp, giving too much definition to the hollows and shadows of his face. See green eyes just a touch too bright to not almost glow during the darkest nights. See skin the same pallor of snow around him with even the same red smeared across it, staining it, from the bleeding of his hand.

And think that he was a monster wearing human skin.


	14. Chapter 14

_The next thing to learn is to hide your aura. Necromancers are born with it, it is what unnerves those around us and it cannot be controlled until the individual is older. Until your sixteenth year of life, burying your aura will only serve to lessen this feeling. It will never completely disappear, but it will decrease the risk of hostile attacks on you. Where raising is a practice in patience, this is a practice in endurance. Think of the aura as a body, you must bury it to hide it. To do this one needs to pull on the other magic they have within them. Once they have a grasp on this magic, they are to pull it and use it to cover the aura._

_This is where endurance comes in, their magic demands a constant concentration and pull to use, to keep your aura covered in the beginning it is a constant struggle to keep it up and in place. There will be times when it slips, you must be aware of this, the highest risks are when you pull your magic to use and have to split your concentration, when your emotions get out of your control, or when you use your Necromancy. Necromancy increases this aura, the magic you were using to bury it will become too small, what was once one body to bury is now multiple needing to be buried with the same amount of space and dirt. Be wary of these slips and seek to avoid them._

*******

With a reminder of how terrifying death was even to him, how monstrous his powers, Harry knew he needed to work on hiding his aura that would make the others feel like he had, that singled him out as _other_.

He needed to do _anything_ that would lessen the paranoia and fear that would fester in the brains of those he would spend time with.

He already knew that being in an enclosed space with hundreds of students for most of the year would see him becoming a target as they attempted to reassert themselves, prove that they weren’t scared of him, prove to themselves that he was nothing to fear.

He refused to trade one prison for another, but he was smart enough to realize he would never survive if he had the entire school against him.

He had to last, to survive, long enough to see the world, to experience things, to _live_.

If- if he had to become the monster that he felt like he was to protect himself, to show that he would not spend the rest of his years until he could leave bleeding and bruised then he would.

He would have to.

Hogwarts would not be another number 4, Privet Drive.

He refused.

So, he practiced. And practiced. And practiced.

Magic over the Doorway, like covering a river with ice. It was still there, flowing, being, but the ice covered it, hiding it, luring one into a false sense of security. But still terrifying, terrifying with the idea that the ice might break and down one will go, into the depths, into the darkness, into the freezing water that will never let one go from its grasp.

He knew that he was still unnerving, the hair on the back of the cats rose when he walked near them, but no longer did they hiss. It was only a small improvement, but it was better than nothing. It would suit his needs.

Enough fear could make people leave him alone, but too much and they will seek to eliminate the threat.

But every time his temper flared, every time he used his magic or his Necromancy, the fear in others increased, he could tell that from when his Aunt Petunia paled after he had felt anger lick up his spine.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. At least for now.

With Necromancy put to the side for now he had to turn back to his magic. Magic was like his Necromantic powers with the fact of the more that he used it the more it needed to be used.

Which saw Harry, come spring, finally gaining another ability with his magic.

Harry had always been better at endurance and patience, one had to be when living at number 4, but precision was something he lacked. Something he wanted to work on.

He turned to the garden for this. Flowers always looked perfect, patterns and petals specifically designed, precise in their execution. If he could replicate this, make them grow faster, better than before, would be an exercise of precision.

Make one part grow faster than the other would make it all fall apart, he needed to be precise in that, but it wasn’t only that.

He was pushing his magic through the soil and into the roots of the flowers, if he compensated for one thing the flower needed to grow more than the others, the flower would just die without blooming.

He needed to give it enough sunlight, and water, and nutrients, and a dozen different things, all with his magic. Enough of each thing would make it bloom, bright and beautiful and almost _magical_.

But forcing a plant to grow and bloom earlier and faster than what was natural was the hardest thing he had to do with his magic so far. It was a dozen things being done at once, each had to be precise, equal. It was feeling the flower and deciphering what it needed.

This was something his magic sorely lacked.

His magic always seemed like a wild thing, like the organized chaos of a forest, each thing has its place but only it knew the pattern to this place. How could he decipher what a flower needed when he could barely decipher his own magic? How could he be precise when his magic slipped out of his fingers like the wind.

These _slips_ saw flowers changing colour, leaves wilting, even one time a prized rose started to glow.

But using his magic this way, these small acts of precision, saw it become exhausted, which prevented outbursts of magic, and he started to get an innate grasp on how it was ordered, how it could be used.

Though the thing he found the most ironic was that the flowers over his graveyard bloomed the brightest and fastest and easiest of all, getting life from death.

Harry practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until those monotone days of normalcy and abuse, all those nights of magic, of resurrection, of wishing he could leave it all behind, came close to an end.

His eleventh birthday was almost upon him, and Hogwarts with it.

His first steps of freedom would soon be here. 

He knew from the voices and the books that around his eleventh birthday his Hogwarts letter would arrive. It _had_ to come, he refused to think that it wouldn’t.

“Do you think I have done enough to fit in?” Harry whispered to Styx in his darkened cupboard. He had long since vanished the wisp lights, leaving him blind in the darkness. There were some things that could only be talked about when cloaked in shadows, when there was no chance of another being able to see you, when you could pull back the layers to reveal the deepest parts of yourself.

“Do you think I’ve done enough to hide myself, to keep myself safe?” his voice was low and full of a sorrowful hope, “I hope so. Maybe I’ll be able to be safe there.”

He swallowed thickly, “If I’m not I’ll have to make it so. I don’t want to wake up bleeding and bruised, not anymore.”

He gazed into the darkness, imagining, hoping, and slowly stroked Styx.

“I hope Hogwarts is all I wish it to be.”

He had long since decided to not go back to Diagon Alley until his letter had arrived, nor act like he knew of the world he was born into, there would be too many questions to ask about how he knew, and Aunt Petunia would certainly not say she had told him.

It seemed like forever ago since he had felt the magic beneath his feet, felt it tingle amongst his skin and sit at the back of his throat, felt its echo. So long ago that sometimes he believed it was only a dream. It was so colourful, so full of life, compared to the world he existed in here at number 4, Privet Drive.

*******

When the morning of July 24th rose on number 4, Privet Drive. There were two very different reactions and emotions in the house.

One was of excitement, a breathless and sleepless type of anticipation that filled every part of someone until they felt like they were going to burst. This emotion belonged to the boy beneath the stairs. A boy who had been waiting for so long to have a taste of freedom again, to feel magic once more.

The second emotion belonged to one Petunia Dursley, and this was dread and hate and the type of fear that saw violence being its reaction. She knew what would happen around the boy’s eleventh birthday, she knew what it held, and she would not let it.

For far too long she had allowed that freakishness to invade her life, she refused to let it claw its way further into it. She already had a monster under her stairs, she would not allow it to gain its claws or sharpen its teeth. It would remain muzzled and caged in the darkened cupboard under the stairs.

And she would keep that boy in that cupboard for however long it took for those _freaks_ to give up with their foolish notions. If they wanted him to attend that- that _school_ , they would have to keep him, she would refuse to take him back.

She had spent ten long, long years dealing with him and his fiendish powers and unnatural looks, and that was only because she was threatened into taking him with- with blood and wards and _magic_.

Yes, he would remain locked away, buried under the stairs like a memory she wished to forget.

*******

Harry listen to the soft footsteps of his aunt as she came down the stairs. He sat up straight, actually excited to get out of his cupboard and into the presence of his dreadful relatives.

The voices always said the letter came around one’s eleventh birthday and it was exactly a week before his, but he knew, deep in his heart, that today, _today_ would be the day his letter came.

He felt a small smile steal across his lips, it had been a long time since he had felt this happy.

But the smile froze, and confusion settled on his face when his aunt walked past the door of his cupboard and kept walking.

Not a word spoken to him, nor a rap on his cupboard to wake him, silence.

Did- did she know what these days meant? He had assumed that she knew of the Wizarding World, of course he did, but he had thought she would have welcomed the chance of getting him as far from this house for as long as possible.

Or did she hate magic so much that she would refuse him his place in that world? Could she? He knew that while Dumbledore held his key for his Trust Vault in Gringotts, his aunt held his guardianship.

Would she make him remain locked up under these stairs until she had use of him? Until he died?

Harry’s eyes darted along the edges of light that outlined his cupboard’s door. Would it be worth the punishment if he unlocked his door? No. If he did he would never be able to get his letter.

He would just have to hope that he could sneak out tonight and grab the letter from where they put it, reply to it with a letter sounding like he knew nothing of the magical world.

Harry spent his day listening to the world outside his cupboard like he did when he was younger, with a desperation to get out and a dying hope of ever seeing Hogwarts sitting in his throat.

His hands ran across Styx’s fur, trying to ground himself in this world and not lose himself to the other realm. He would get his letter and his first steps to freedom would be here.

But he felt tears well in his eyes when he heard the post get put through the door and Aunt Petunia’s sharp hiss of distaste.

His letter had come, and he wasn’t there to receive it.

He refused to let his tears fall as he listened silently to his aunt and uncle’s hissed conversation about the letter he had been waiting for so long for.

“Vernon! Vernon, _it_ has come,” his aunt spat.

“I thought we had beaten it out of him, like we swore to do when he arrived,” Uncle Vernon paced through the kitchen, his words low and dangerous.

“But look! They're watching us, spying on us. They know where he sleeps,” his aunt’s tone had taken on a more fearful cadence. And Harry suddenly wondered if the cupboard under the stairs was written on the letter, if someone had written that and just not cared.

“Spying on us, watching us. No. I won’t have it! We will ignore it. Ignore it and any others that come. I refuse to have it further infect our house.”

“But Vernon! What if- “

“No! My word is final. We ignore it.”

And then his uncle left the house.

That day was full of waiting, and hoping, and wanting.

Finally, finally, he heard them go to sleep that night. It had felt like they were up far later than they usually were.

With the backdrop of Uncle Vernon’s snores, Harry unlocked his cupboard door and snuck out into the shadows of the house.

Now, where would they have put it?

Harry spent the next few hours silently and slowly searching the main level of the house, only to find nothing. Or, at least, there was nothing now.

In the fireplace, there was a small piece of parchment like the one Ignotus’ letter had been written upon sitting burnt and black in the ashes.

His shoulders slumped.

His letter had been burned.

He could see on the front of what would have been his letter, the barely discernible words, ‘- ter The Cupboard under the S-‘

Someone had written it on his letter and just not cared.

His heart fell in his chest. Another example of no one caring about what happened to him.

But he pushed this to the side, it would always end up like this.

He couldn’t dwell on that, not now, not yet, he had bigger things to worry about.

He didn’t know what to do, the voices had always said to respond to the letter, but how could he do that when it was burned?

How would he get to Hogwarts now?

He went back to his cupboard that night despondent, and curled himself into a ball, as if he was sheltering himself from a storm raging above his body, a desperate curl to protect oneself from the world outside.

Maybe- maybe tomorrow would be better. He would figure out what to do tomorrow, figure out a solution.

But tomorrow came and went, hunger ate at his stomach, thirst tore at his throat, but his aunt still refused to let him out of his cupboard. He knew another letter had come, he had heard another hushed discussion between his aunt and uncle. But that night he found its remnants in the fireplace once more.

The day after herald three letters, an increasingly frantic aunt, and an uncle who decided nailing up the mail slot would be the best.

Harry knew he just had to wait. He just _needed_ to wait. Eventually, they will miss one and he will be able to respond.

He spent these days in a monotone boredom, silent and still and waiting. He couldn’t risk reading his books with the chance of his relatives opening his cupboard and finding them. So, he sat there staring into the shadows, trying not to drown as the Doorway ebbed and flowed around him.

Day after day more letters came, yet every time Harry snuck out of the cupboard that night none still existed. Burned, shredded, gone.

Hopefully, Hogwarts wouldn’t give up before Harry could find an intact letter.

It was Sunday when Harry was finally let out of his cupboard, but only after his letters had come. His uncle had dragged him from the house, red and fuming, tufts missing from his moustache, and threw him in the back of the car beside Dudley, who stared at him with wide eyes. His aunt had sat primly in the front seat with an expression of distaste on her face.

Harry wanted to laugh and cry. They were fleeing the letters, how scared must they be? If they felt even a fraction of the fear that he felt growing up with them his year would be made. But, this elation was tempered by the fact that every book he owned was still in his cupboard, what if they never came back? He needed his Necromancy book. And he couldn’t leave Ignotus’ letter behind. It was _his_. His only link to his father’s family at this moment.

But Harry didn’t have a chance to retrieve it before Uncle Vernon was driving and driving and driving farther and farther away all in silence. No one wanted to risk setting off Uncle Vernon, who was muttering in dark tones under his breath, voice too low to be able to discern what he was saying. So, silence sat heavy in the car.

They drove without stopping, no food, no water, until finally Dudley felt a little bit of the pain he did after days with no food and water. But unlike Harry, Dudley spent the day howling and whining, like he was being tortured.

Harry had long since grown used to these feelings, so he sat silently, staring at the world outside his window. Rolling hills and fields, green and growing, passed him by. This was the farthest he had ever been from number 4.

Finally, hills and fields died, and the outskirts of a city rose before Harry’s eyes.

It was here they entered a small hotel, old and musty, looking like it was rotting.

Harry was forced to share a room with Dudley, who dropped off to sleep almost instantly. Harry, in the meanwhile, sat there at the window, staring out of it.

He would pass on that chance to sleep in a bed just so he could see this world so far from what he was used to.

As cars passed and their lights reflected off of the wet ground, Harry wondered how he would deal with sharing a room at Hogwarts. How would he be able to hide Styx? Or his books?

Where was he going to practice? _How_ was he going to practice? He hadn’t thought of a solution for that yet.

He figured he could find a secluded spot somewhere and sneak out at night but getting the things he needed to practice on was harder. Maybe Styx could find things for him? She would be small enough to fit into the cervices that mice would hide, and he could just _become_ her to find where they were.

Or he could just buy a box of living rats, and just- just- you know- smash them? Or maybe he could take some rat poison that’s in the shed and just feed a little to the one he needed.

He didn’t want to kill anything, putting them back to rest after resurrecting them was hard enough. That’s why when he first had Styx he let her stay around.

But he didn’t want his powers to lose control with others around him.

He knew sacrifices must be made for him to survive.

He went to sleep that night with a heavy heart and resolve sitting in his spine. A battle had been chosen when he decided to go to Hogwarts, now he must survive it by any means necessary. Even if it meant doing things he didn’t want to.

It was the next morning that another letter found its way to them, and Harry started to get worried. His uncle was incensed, furious and crazed, everyone was back in the car, driving again for a destination unknown to them.

Uncle Vernon even ignored Aunt Petunia’s quiet suggestion of “It might be better to just return home.” And kept driving. To the middle of great, old forest, with trees reaching up and up and up. To the middle of a farmer’s field, golden and growing. To the middle of a bridge. To the top of a parking garage. Each time his uncle got out of the vehicle, examined the area, looked displeased, and got back into the car. For the first time in his entire life he felt that Aunt Petunia and him both shared the same fear of his uncle.

Finally, late in the afternoon Uncle Vernon had gotten out of the car at the coast and disappeared around the bend.

The sky was dark with the greys of the clouds falling into shadows. They loomed overhead, clouds like a wave waiting to crash into the land. Harry eyed it nervously, it reminded him of the lurking Doorway.

Drops began to fall, slow and great, tears from above.

A comment from Dudley reminded him that his birthday was tomorrow. Perhaps this trip was the greatest gift his Uncle Vernon had ever given him. A chance to see a little of the world, even if his uncle had been acting crazy.

But when Uncle Vernon came back, ecstatic and smiling, Harry knew what ever was about to happen would not be good.

Ushering everyone from the vehicle and into the cold air, his uncle ignored everyone’s questions, and gleefully pronounced, “There’s a storm coming tonight! And this gentleman has kindly agreed to lend me his boat!”

A look at the rickety and old rowboat sitting in the rough water filled Harry with dread. Was Uncle Vernon trying to kill everyone?

Harry spared a glanced at the little shack that sat on a jagged rock out in the middle of the rough sea. It looked like it had been abandoned for a hundred years, and with good reason too, it was small and roughly put together, barely looking like it would survive the coming storm.

But even with ice cold raindrops falling on them, Uncle Vernon pushed them into the boat.

Harry hunched his shoulders, as the wind rose up to meet them and the water churned, splashing them with every wave.

He looked down into sea, into the inky depths that hid the same type of monsters that lurked within himself and swallowed, turning his eyes back to the bottom of the boat. This was reminding him too much of the lack of control that came with going too deep into his Necromancy.

When they finally made it to the abandoned shack, Harry was thrilled, even though its inside looked exactly like he had expected. Old. Rotten. Empty. But better than the rain outside, that promised to become an untameable storm and the endless depths of the sea.

That night Harry laid on the floor of the hut, listening to the shrieking of the wind that threatened to dislodge the shack from its foundation, listening to the roaring of the waves as they crashed against the shore, it seemed like the end of times outside.

Harry sat there silent and cold, wondering if he would ever be able to get a letter here.

Styx’s soft squeak alerted him to fact that there was something outside the walls of this hut.

Harry shot up and froze, even over the low rumble of thunder he could hear rocks moving under the feet of something big. It circled the house, from the brief bolts of lightning he could see a shadow of a large humanoid form beyond the window.

What was outside in the darkness? What could have made its way on land from the bottomless depths, uncaring to the harsh waves of the ocean, to the storm raging above it, the howling wind, the icy cold, what kind of creature lurks in that kind of darkness?

A boom resounded through the shack.

Whatever it was that could endure the outside weather without a problem was knocking to enter the building. 


	15. Chapter 15

_There will be a few out there who won’t be affected by your aura at all. Why this is remains a mystery to me and shall most likely remain a mystery for years to come. They can be great friends and great enemies. Be prepared. Never rely solely on your aura to keep others away and protect you, learn all you can and do not make enemies before you know you are more powerful than them. We die just like any other with a slit throat or by the pyre. Magic is a great equalizer in life for those who have it, but like Necromancy there will be some whose powers burn like stars next to a spark. They are more than a match for the best of us. Be wary. Be watchful. Be prepared. Death comes to us all, but when makes all the difference._

*******

The being’s knocking was loud enough that even Dudley, who could sleep through the screaming thunderstorm outside, was shaken from his sleep.

Harry prepared to call upon his magic, prepared to call fire to his hands. Necromancy would be useless here, he had nothing to raise.

Dudley sat up and Uncle Vernon came running into the room, shouting at top of his lungs. “Whoever’s there I’m warning you! I’m armed!”

And he was, he had a rifle, long and silver, in his hands pointing at the door.

Uncle Vernon had finally lost it. He was going to kill something. Would he kill Harry after he did so?

Another resounding boom, silence, and then a third. Seemingly unconcerned of Uncle Vernon’s threats.

The door shook and fell from its place, and there was a… man or what seemed to be a man.

A man, taller and broader than he had ever seen before, his face hidden almost completely by shaggy hair and a wild beard, stood at the door for a moment before shuffling himself into the hut, head ducked as not to hit the ceiling when he stood.

With a single hand he refitted the door in its place and turned to look at them.

Who was he? What was he? Why was he here?

Before Harry could think of an answer to any of these questions, the man strode over to the couch saying meaningless words, before he turned to Harry with a smiling face and said “An’ here’s Harry!”

The man knew him.

*******

Now, Rubeus Hagrid, would never say he was the smartest when it came to books or anything of the like, but he did know creatures.

And little Harry certainly reminded him of a threstral foal born out of season in midwinter. He was all skin and bones with a mane of untamable black hair, wide-eyed and skittish.

And Hagrid- Hagrid knew that the ones born in midwinter needed a little extra love and care to make sure they survived to become some of the biggest and best in the herd, and that skittish creatures just needed a careful hand and patience.

Hagrid looked down at Harry and remembered the threstral foal he nursed back to health the winter after that horrid night he pulled the little toddler from his crib. Harry had fit into one of his hands that evening, silent with a wound on his forehead, and while that foal was now leader of the herd, Harry here was still so small with that scar still marring his head.

"Las' time I saw yeh, yeh was only a baby," Hagrid said.

*******

Harry startled, this man had known him when he was a baby? Did he know his parents?

But before he could ask, Uncle Vernon interjected, waving his rifle around like it was nothing but a toy, “I demand you leave at once!”

Like Uncle Vernon could demand anything of this man. He was obviously magical and, for the first time Harry had ever seen, even larger than his uncle. But a gun wasn’t something Harry wanted to test against magic, not when he was in the crossfire.

But the man simply reached for the gun, bent it in half, and threw it in the corner like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t just bent steal like it was paper and ignored that Uncle Vernon turned purple then pale. How could the man do that? Did magic really make it possible for someone to bend steal with their hands?

“Anyway,” the large man said, eyes still on Harry, “A very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here. I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right.”

Then the man pulled out a brown box, slightly dented but still intact, and handed it to him. Now Harry stared at the box with wide eyes, he hadn’t been given much in his life from another, he had been given his name after it was stolen, given left over clothing and the cupboard under the stairs, what had the man gotten him? Why did he get Harry something?

Harry could see that his hands were shaking as he slowly opened the cardboard lid and peered inside. Within it sat a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.

This- this man had gotten a cake for him. A cake with his name on it. A cake wishing him Happy Birthday. Harry had never had one before. There was a strange feeling in his chest and he was forced to blink away tears gathering in his eyes.

Somehow this man was showing him more kindness in these few moments than the rest of his family had in years.

Harry looked up and with a shaky smiled said, “Thank you! But I don’t know who you are?” Who was this person? Who did he have to thank?

The giant looked a little embarrassed and said, proudly with a glimmer in his eyes, “Sorry about that. I’m Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.”

Hogwarts. This was the moment! Ask about Hogwarts!

“I’m sorry, what’s Hogwarts?” Harry hoped his false confusion sounded convincing enough that his family won’t think he knew about the magical world beforehand and the man won’t think he knew either. So much rested on this moment.

The man jolted from where he was fiddling with the fireplace, “Yeh don’ know about Hogwarts!” As if it was travesty that Harry didn’t know, Hagrid quickly turned to where Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia stood, shouting, “How did yeh not tell him where his parents learned it all?”

Harry knew that Hagrid was referring to magic, and it was too good of an opportunity to pass up seeing his relatives get yelled at. Obviously Hagrid took exception to the fact Harry didn’t know of Hogwarts, what would he do if Harry didn’t know about magic?

Hiding his smile, Harry asked, “All what?”

“All what?” Hagrid nearly roared, voice sounding like thunder from the storm. “Did they not tell yeh anythin’!” Hagrid seemed to be trying to restrain himself from marching over to the Dursleys and doing something he would regret.

But this noise seemed to wake Uncle Vernon from his stupor, “Now, listen here! We refuse to have anything to do with that nonsense. We cared for the boy, but I refuse to allow him to go and learn about that- that freakishness!” Panting and near purple from rage, his uncle suddenly looked rabid.

That was probably the worst thing his uncle could have done.

“Yeh didn’ tell him about his parents, about his world! How could yeh! What about the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there an’ saw him leave it! An' you've kept it from him all these years?”

Dumbledore left him a letter? Wait, _Dumbledore_ was the one who left him at his relatives? Why? What for?

Hagrid was near trembling in rage where he stood, he took a large breath, ignoring Uncle Vernon’s spluttering, and turned back to Harry.

“Harry, yer a wizard,” Hagrid said.

“I’m a what?” Harry asked, trying to make his eyes larger and to seem bewildered. If he failed here, everything failed.

“Yer a wizard. An’ yer gonna be a good ‘un, I can tell. I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter.”

Finally, his Hogwarts letter.

He had been waiting so long for it. This was what held his hopes to leave number 4.

Harry reached out a trembling hand to take the parchment for Hagrid.

He briefly glanced at his name and location written across the front, before he turned his gaze at the wax seal that kept the letter closed. He broke it with shaking hands, and pulled out the letter.

He read it with his heart pounding with excitement. He couldn’t believe it was actually happening. He had waited and hoped for so long. Yet here in his hands was _his_ letter, _his_ Hogwarts letter.

But all he said was, “I don’t have an owl.”

Hagrid suddenly swore under his breath and started to rummage through his coat’s pockets, until he pulled out a quill, parchment and an owl. Brown and small, it was a real, live, breathing owl.

He couldn’t exactly say anything about keeping an owl in his pocket considering Harry carried around Styx, but he still wondered what other living creatures Hagrid kept in his pockets if there was an owl in there.

Hagrid scribbled a letter, gave it to the owl, and then threw the owl out into the raging storm like it was completely normal. Harry felt like he would need to get used to a lot of things, and fast.

What followed was a brief argument between Hagrid and his uncle about whether or not Harry would go to Hogwarts (he would), a brief rundown of the previous wizarding war (in which Harry found that people called Voldemort ‘you-know-who,’ arguably the stupidest thing Harry had heard. Why fear a name?), Dudley was given a pig’s tail by Hagrid (which automatically made Hagrid a favourite in Harry’s eyes), a brief sleep that night, and suddenly Harry was standing in front of the Leaky Cauldron with Hagrid. 

Harry, even knowing about the wizarding world, was feeling very much overwhelmed with the sudden and rapid pace things progressed. Harry didn’t even want to _think_ about how confusing and overwhelming this would have been if he didn’t know about it.

Thankfully the Leaky Cauldron looked as run down as the first time he saw it, but definitely more crowded this time around with a man behind the counter instead of the woman who manned it last time.

Before they fully wandered in, as Harry was bracing himself to get mobbed by people once his identify was out, Hagrid gave a quick look at Harry, thought for a minute and remembered how skittish the new threstral foals were.

Hagrid rummaged around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a faded brown hat and pushed it on Harry’s head, covering his scar and a large portion of his hair as it slipped down his head.

“Best keep yer scar covered,” Hagrid said.

Then he ushered Harry close to him, hiding Harry with his large frame, and walk through the building quickly, not even stopping to say something to Tom the bartender.

Harry still watched the bricks unveil with wide eyes, like pulling back a curtain, suddenly Harry could feel the magic again. The hum beneath his feet and the same static tingle in the air from lightning. Its ebb and flow, its rise and fall.

 _Magic_ once more existed beneath his feet.

Harry could have stood there for the entire day, just soaking in the feeling of magic, but they had things to do and places to be.

Gringotts was still an intimidating sight, the ride down still baffling, then they were at the Potter Trust Vault.

Small and filled with only coins, it would fit for his needs for the day.

After gathering some coins, Griphook, the goblin, took them to Vault 713 to pick up something Hagrid had proclaimed was for Professor Dumbledore.

Whatever it was, it was small enough to fit in Hagrid’s pocket.

But more importantly it was something that caused his Necromancy to sit up and take notice. Like a hawk finding a mouse, it was suddenly paying attention and directing all of its focus on the item in Hagrid’s pocket.

Whatever it was, it was linked with death.

His powers kept notice of the item the entire time he was near Hagrid, a constant buzz, a tug on his senses, a reminder it was there.

“Might as well get yer uniform, while I pick up yer books an’ potions supplies,” said Hagrid, nodding towards Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. Right. Robes. Those were a thing.

With a small smile Harry saw him off as he entered the shop alone. He glanced around quickly, where did he buy Hogwarts’ robes at?

His musing was interrupted by a squat witch with needles and pins on all parts of her clothing, asking “Hogwarts, dear? Got the lot here. Another young man being fitted up just now, in fact.” Directing him to where a boy, just a tad less pale than him with pointed features and snow white hair, stood on a footstool getting his black robes pinned by a second witch.

_Malfoy. Pureblood. Rich. WardholdersofWiltshire. Hewasadeatheater. Oneofthefirst._

Harry pushed the voices away, he couldn’t be distracted, as the witch stood him on a stool next to the boy the voices proclaimed Malfoy.

As Harry was starting to get fitted for his robes, Malfoy spoke “Hello, Hogwarts, too?”

He couldn’t make enemies, not even if the boy was related to a Death Eater. Not yet, not now. Best be polite.

“Yes,” said Harry. Short and to the point. The tone of someone who didn’t want to talk.

But the boy didn’t get the memo as Malfoy prattled on, so much so that Harry zoned out as Malfoy drawled on and on, the boy almost like to speak as much as Dudley. Harry only started listening again when he heard the boy ask if he had a broom, those death traps?

“No,” Harry replied.

“Play Quidditch at all?”

“No,” Harry said again, would Malfoy get the hint that he didn’t want to talk and leave him alone?

More bragging, another two question which the answer to was ‘no’ and silence.

Then, Malfoy said something that automatically put him in the ‘dislike’ category of Harry’s life.

Hagrid had wandered into view of the front window hands carrying Harry’s supplies and two ice creams, when Malfoy said, voice mocking and belittling, “Look at that man!”

“That’s Hagrid. He works at Hogwarts,” Harry’s voice was cold, he hadn’t liked how Malfoy had spoke about Hagrid.

“Oh,” said Malfoy, “I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?”

Some sort of servant? Like that would make him any less, but still, Hagrid had sounded very proud of his job.

“He's the gamekeeper,” said Harry, curt, short, polite. He couldn’t lose his temper. Not here.

“Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage. Lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”

Harry felt the Doorway roar. How dare he? Hagrid had been kind to him. He had gotten him a cake for his birthday, be angry on Harry’s behalf, cover his scar so he wouldn’t get mobbed, picked up his supplies, and even gotten him an ice cream.

And this- this _Malfoy_ has the audacity to say that about Hagrid. Harry took a deep breath to calm his temper. It wouldn’t do to set someone on fire on his second visit to Diagon Alley.

“I think he's brilliant," Harry said, trying to channel the biting ice and freezing blizzard from the Doorway into his voice. He wanted this boy to understand how displeased he was. How much Harry wanted to make him regret saying that.

The boy sneered, “Do you? Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”

“Dead.” If this boy didn’t shut up soon not even Styx and the threat to his safety would stop him from doing something to Malfoy.

At least that seemed to give the boy a slight pause, perhaps because he was so brisk in the delivery of that information.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, not that he actually was. “But they were our kind, weren't they?”

Something was cracking in Harry. Was this boy alluding to blood? Alluding to the same stupid reason that the last war was fought over? Harry said nothing, trying vainly to keep the Doorway and his magic under control. But the boy kept speaking.

“I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?”

Crack. His aura he was trying so hard to hide flowed out of him. It blanketed the room like ashes from a volcano. Smothering. Consuming. Deadly.

Malfoy turned three shades paler than he was before, his eyes grew wide. In fact, everyone in the store did.

The room seemed frozen, as if their hearts has stopped beating for a moment, before the witch working on him, stuttered and said “Th- that's- that’s you done.”

Hoping that no one noticed that he was the source of the feeling, Harry stepped off the stool as he reburied his aura under layer after layer of his magic.

Malfoy still hadn’t regained his bearings when Harry left, still standing there pale and shaking, like he deserved.

Harry spent the time eating his ice cream both berating himself for losing control and trying to get it back under control.

Finally, once they were done Hagrid looked at his supplies list.

“Just yer wand left. An' I still haven't got yeh a birthday present,” he said. “If yeh don’ mind I’ll go an’ get yeh a present while yeh get yer wand.”

Hagrid’s tone had a wistful type of sorrow when speaking about a wand, and Harry suddenly remembered that Hagrid wasn’t supposed to be using magic. Harry thought that was creative form of torture, to make a man not use his magic while surrounded by it. He didn’t think he would be able to survive it like Hagrid had.

Be able to have it at his fingertips, have it thrumming under his skin, and just _leaving_ it there.

And another gift? Hadn’t his cake been a gift enough?

“That sounds fine Hagrid. But you don’t have to-“

“Nonsense. Its yer birthday.”

It was his birthday, but no one had ever celebrated it before. Much less actually got him a cake and a gift.

To Harry, Hagrid was- he was the kindest person Harry had met in a long, long time.

They parted ways once more, outside of a shop proclaimed Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. Obviously a family business.

Harry could feel the pulsing of magic from this building. Young and old. Wild and tamed. Seeking. Searching. It reached out towards the occupants of the alley, flowing amongst and around people like the wind.

Harry paused at the entrance, this was it. He would finally get his own wand.

He wondered briefly if his would share any similarities with his parents, if his wand would be another thing that could connect him to them.

He softly stroked Styx from where she sat hidden in his hair and under Hagrid’s hat, before taking a deep breath and entering the narrow building.

A bell broke the silence of the shop as he entered. Small and thin boxes lined the walls, rising like mountains from the ground. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he had a sudden feeling that reminded him of unbound nature, wild winters, burning summers, the new growth in spring, and the decay in fall.

“It has been a very long time since one like you stepped foot into this shop,” said a soft voice. “I thought my ancestors had seen the last of your kind.”

Harry jumped and swivelled to the voice. A man stood there, old with wide, pale eyes shining like clouds after a storm, like the full moon on a winter’s night.

“Worry not-“ the man waved his hand about carelessly, “-we have cared little about the ministry’s view on magic and men.”

The man knew about his Necromancy, that Harry was a Necromancer, without Harry even having to say anything. How? Why? Could anyone tell?

“How?” Harry’s question came out shakier and quieter than he would have liked, but the man heard him all the same.

“Your ancestors were not the only ones to have the blood of lost people in them. Mine just happened to sense rifts between two realms easier than most.”

What?

What is this man?

Even though the man had said he didn’t care, Harry kept a close watch on the man, tense and prepared to bolt encase anything went wrong. It was unnerving to have someone know about him being a Necromancer. Even with the understanding that they were both remnants of a history long past.

“I am just surprised to see that it awakens in you. But perhaps, I am not. When your mother walked into this shop she left with a wand of ten-and-a-quarter inches long, swishy, and made of willow. A nice wand for charm work. Your father, though, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration.” The man, who could only be Mr. Ollivander, walked closer to Harry, a sorrowful look on his face but unblinking.

How could Mr. Ollivander remember what wands his parents had? Did he remember every wand?

“I wonder what wand will choose you,” Mr. Ollivander’s eyes darted to his forehead, “I sold the wand that did that, and I’m sorry to say it. Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. A powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands, well-“ the man’s hand rose as if he was about to reach for Harry before it fell, “-we all have seen what has happened.”

“Now, Mr. Potter shall we see which wand chooses you?” a long tape measure was pulled from Mr. Ollivander’s pocket. “Which is your wand arm?”

“I write with my right-hand,” Harry answered as he lifted it.

And suddenly, the tape measure sprung to life measuring him in various places for various things that Harry had no idea about.

“Normally, I sell wands with three cores. Unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. Each unique,” Mr. Ollivander said while pulling down box after box. And finally, the tape measure stopped and fell.

“Right. I know you will be a tricky customer, so let’s get started, shall we? Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Just take it and give it a wave.”

Harry took the wand and felt his magic become repulsed by it, and Mr. Ollivander obviously knew that too as the wand was snatched from his hand quickly.

With narrowed eyes, Mr. Ollivander gave him wand after wand to try, yet nothing happened.

Until finally, Mr. Ollivander pulled out a single wand.

“This was an unusual combination of mine. Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple.”

Yet as Harry took it in his hands, he felt his magic jump towards it just to stop just short of entering it. As if it was assessing the wands worth. Then just as fast as a hummingbird’s heart, the wood of the wand withered and decayed as his Necromancy flared. Leaving a rotten husk of a stick behind and gaps in which Harry could use to glimpse the bright feather within.

Harry jumped as Mr. Ollivander clapped his hands once, “Just as I thought. Right core but the wrong container for it. Follow me Mr. Potter, you will need something different to hold that core and be able to withstand your powers.”

The feather at the core of the rotted wood gave off a feeling like the item in Hagrid’s pocket but much less potent. It was something linked with the Doorway, linked with death. And surrounded by rotting wood it sat burning, red like blood and fire, as it called to his magic.

Harry wondered what it said about him that even his magic was called to something like this.

He studied it as he followed Mr. Ollivander deeper and deeper into the store, halls twisting and turning, this way and that, until they came to a workshop filled with materials. Here Mr. Ollivander pulled a section of the wall back, revealing a small hidden shelf. Where he pulled out several boxes and walked back.

“Place the core and former wood on the counter please.”

Harry did as he was told and waited as he watched Mr. Ollivander pull out various materials from the boxes he had retrieved.

“Wizards and witches of today in Britain use wood in their wands because their magic is from the earth and as such connect to it far better than any other material and partially it is because the wood itself remains alive in the wand,” said Mr. Ollivander as he finished laying various materials on the counter. “That makes it all the easier for its users to embrace it and use it to channel their magic, it runs through the earth and the plants and the living things.” Mr. Ollivander eyes rose to meet Harry’s as he continued, “In other cases, various rocks and gems were used in place of wood. Those individuals’ magic binds tighter with the magic that is far older than the magic we use today. Others will never be able to use a wand nor any instrument and must rely solely on themselves to harness magic.”

Mr. Ollivander’s gaze drilled into Harry, like a fire burning away everything that Harry used to hide everything that made him himself.

“Run your hand over each object, we will know when one chooses you.”

Harry stepped forward, watching Mr. Ollivander from the corner of his eyes until he turned to examine the items.

Upon the table, there were a variety of objects. Things that resembled bones of every shape and size, gemstones of every colour and make glittering in the light, and pieces of wood in reds, whites, golds, and every other combination.

He slowly moved his hand over top each object. For some his Necromancy reached for but his magic jumped away, others saw his magic reluctantly move towards them, and for a few nothing happened.

He was getting worried that he would never find his match when both his magic and Necromancy poured out of him, reaching into and drawing upwards the material beneath it.

Dark amber and opal blue, the piece of wood was heavier in his hands than he had expected it to be. But it sat nicely in his hand with his magic dancing over and through the material as the Doorway connected a very small spiderweb sliver of power between him and it.

The wood softened just barely, and he knew that this was it. This would be part of his wand.

But before Harry could say anything, Mr. Ollivander plucked it from his hands, muttering, “Just what I thought. Just what I thought.”

Mr. Ollivander turned to a separate work bench, and said, over his shoulder, “Please return to the front Mr. Potter. I’ll be out in just a few moments with your wand.”

Did it really only take that long to make a wand?

But Harry didn’t ask, instead he turned to the door and started to walk back the way he had come. Though a straight path stood where it once was a maze. It was still surrounded by towering boxes full of wands, and Harry suddenly wondered if every one of them would find their owner in his lifetime or if some of these wands had been around since this shop had been founded, still waiting patiently for their owners.

And, Harry thought, concerning Mr. Ollivander’s comment about his ancestors, if they had been around far longer than the sign actually says.

It took him just a few minutes of waiting in the front of the shop, with anticipation and nerves building within him, for Mr. Ollivander to emerge from the back, a dark box in his hands.

He pulled from the box, a wand. It was the colour of polished dark amber, no sign of the opal blue it once had. Thin at the tip, it twirled and flared near the bottom, until there was just enough of a protrusion that to Harry’s eyes it looked almost like the end of a bone.

He suddenly knew that he would be able to find his wand no matter where it was. It called to him, and even though it felt just slightly _off_ , slightly _different_ , than the other wands surrounding it in the shop.

But to Harry it felt beckoning and welcoming, and overwhelmingly that it was _his_.

To Harry it was perfect.

“Give it a wave, Mr. Potter,” Mr. Ollivander’s eyes seemed larger than earlier as Harry reached out and took the wand.

The feeling of a freezing day in winter, a burning day in summer, fire bending to his will, raising the dead in his hands, of eternity and timelessness, all filled him at once. His magic and the sliver of power from the Doorway twined and became one reaching for the wand.

He waved it in a circle and where there was once only polished dark amber became cracked with lines of opal blue the closer to the tip it was. It shined and glowed, and out came sparks.

Like the wisps he created in his room, these filled the darkened shop casting light to the shadows, filling the space with a universe of stars shining in an endless cycle of colours, dancing and falling, wishes fulfilled.

“Oh, bravo! A perfect match indeed! Both curious and not… both curious and not…” Mr. Ollivander said, voice growing fainter as he repackaged the wand Harry was reluctant to part with in the box.

“How so?” asked Harry, giddy from the feeling of his wand.

“This wand will serve you well. As well as its brother, who shared the same phoenix’s tail feather with yours, served its master. Your wand’s brother was thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. And happened to give you that scar,” Mr. Ollivander froze and locked eyes with Harry, as if examining his very soul and being.

“I think we _must_ expect great things from you, Mr. Potter,” Harry swallowed thickly, as Mr. Ollivander continued. “After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things- terrible, yes, but great. And a wand like yours. Phoenix tail feather and petrified wood. Why it will never settle for anything less but to transcend the boundaries of what is possible.”

Harry squared his jaw and tried to shrug off the sudden bout of foreboding that settled over him. Just because he shared something with another, wouldn’t mean he would follow their footsteps.

“Petrified wood will never work for any but you, or another Necromancer of course. It is your power within you that makes it more than stone, that reawakens it from its slumber. Your power is old but your magic new, this wood is the compromise between the two.”

“And what do I tell them when someone looks at it?” asked Harry, he wouldn’t be able to use it if everyone could tell it wasn’t normal.

“To all who look at it but you and a wandmaker, it will appear to be whatever wood it was before it died and became immortalized. Worry not, your secret shall be kept.”

Harry stared at Mr. Ollivander and nodded once as he paid the nine gold Galleons for his wand.

Harry felt a silent understanding shared between them. They were some of the last of dying races, people out of place in the world around them, but he wondered where Mr. Ollivander belonged.

When Harry exited the wand shop, Hagrid was waiting for him. A smile on his face and a cage in his hands.

Within the cage sat a beautiful, white owl with eyes the colour of autumn leaves. She stared at him as Harry walked towards them, with eyes as intelligent as Styx’s she seemed to be assessing Harry’s worth.

Hagrid smiled turned to a beam when he saw Harry and said, “Happy Birthday, Harry! Isn’ she a beauty!”

“Yes, yes she is,” Harry said, watching the owl turn its head away from him. He was suddenly very thankful that he had been able to cover his aura at least enough that the bird wasn’t terrified, he would have felt terrible if Hagrid felt as if his gift was good.

As Hagrid and Harry shared one last meal before Harry was sent on his way back to number 4 on the train, Hagrid had one last gift for Harry.

“This is yer ticket fer Hogwarts,” Hagrid said handing Harry a small ticket. “For the first o' September. King's Cross, all yeh need to know is on yer ticket.”

Hagrid looked around for a second before saying, “If yeh have any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me.”

Harry had to fight a smile at that. Hagrid was the first person who had actually had the forethought of thinking about what the Dursleys might do, who actually saw what they were like. How could Hagrid see it but no one else?

How was Hagrid the only one that seemed to care?

And in the dying light of day, they parted from each other, and once more Harry was left alone with only Styx and an owl to keep him company.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first portion of a much longer story that awaits being written until I have time to do so.


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